BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



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NEW COSMOPOLIS 



NEW COSMOPOLIS 

A BOOK OF IMAGES 



INTIMATE NEW YORK. CERTAIN EUROPEAN CITIES 
BEFORE THE WAR I VIENNA, PRAGUE, LITTLE 
HOLLAND, BELGIAN ETCHINGS, MADRID, DUBLIN, 
MARIENBAD. ATLANTIC CITY AND NEWPORT 



BY 

JAMES HUNEKER 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1915 



h 1 7.} 



COPYRIGHT, 191 5, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published March, 1915 




MAR I7 isis 

lC)ciA;!9716i 



^0 

VANCE THOMPSON 

En Souvenir — "M'lle New York" 



" Vengo adesso dl Cosmopoli." 
— Stendhal. 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE 

All my life I have longed to write a preface. 
Not such tinkhng evasions as forewords or intro- 
ductions, but a full-fledged preface which would 
render quite superfluous what follows it. Con- 
sider the case of Mr. Shaw. His prefaces are 
such witty masterpieces that they make neg- 
ligible his plays. But I have never cultivated 
courage enough to take the first dive into chilly 
type. Either I have squarely dodged the sol- 
emn undertaking or compromised with a coda; 
in one instance I actually fabricated a pref- 
ace for Egoists (a book that had been printed 
some years) and placed it in a later one. Even 
in the present head-Hne there lurks a meek qual- 
ification. However, as brevity may be a pledge 
of sincerity, I may say this book of sky-lines 
and perspectives first appeared in the hospi- 
table columns of the New York Sun, Herald, 
Times, Puck, and Metropolitan Magazine; that 
the European notes were written and published 
before the beginning of the war (from the sum- 
mer of 1909 to the spring of 19 14); and that if 
silence is preserved as to certain art galleries 
of Amsterdam, The Hague, Madrid, and else- 
where, it is because these public collections with 

vii 



INSTEAD OF A PREFACE 

many others were treated at length in my Prom- 
enades of an Impressionist. 

That inveterate cosmopolite, Stendhal, wished 
to be in a city where the people were most like 
him. Now, Max Stirner, implacable philoso- 
pher of egoism, would never have acknowledged 
there could be a place where his like might be 
found. As a cosmopolitan by self-election, I 
agree with both these egoists. The world at 
large is compounded of rhythmic surprise and 
charm, as may well be our intimate life; their 
enjoyment depends upon the vision and sym- 
pathy we bring to them. If Stendhal were in 
New York to-day he could write: Lo, I am at 
Cosmopolis! The New Cosmopolis. Let me 
conclude this meagre apology for a preface with 
the declaration of literary faith made by J.-K. 
Huysmans: "I record what I see, what I feel, 
what I have experienced, writing it as well as 
I can, et voild toutT^ 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

Intimate New York 

PAGE 

I. The Fabulous East Side 3 

II. The Lungs 21 

III. The Waterways 38 

IV. The Matrix 51 

V. The Maw of the Monster 74 

VI. The Night Hath a Thousand Eyes ... 91 

VII. Brain and Soul and Pocketbook . . . . iio 

VIII. Coney Island 149 

I. By Day 149 

II. At Night 159 

PART II 

Certain European Cities Before the War 

I. Vienna i8i 

II. Prague 200 

III. Little Holland 217 

I. Rotterdam 217 

II. Through the Canals 226 

III. Holland en Fete 233 

ix 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

IV. Belgian Etchings 250 

I. Brussels 250 

II. Little Cities and the Beaches . . . 257 

V. Madrid 269 

VI. Dear Old Dublin 279 

VII. Fighting Fat at Marienbad 295 

PART III 
Sand and Sentiment 

I. Atlantic City 309 

II. Newport 329 



PART I 
INTIMATE NEW YORK 



I 

THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

The illusions of the middle-aged die hardest. 
At twenty I discovered, with sorrow, that there 
was no such enchanted spot as the Latin Quar- 
ter. An old Frenchman with whom I dined 
daily at that time in a luxurious Batignolles 
gargote informed me that Paris had seen the 
last of the famous quarter after the Commune, 
but a still older person who wrote obituary no- 
tices for the parish swore the Latin Quarter 
had not been in existence since 1848; the swell- 
ing tide of democracy had swept away the 
darling superstitions of the students, many of 
whom became comfortably rich when Napo- 
leon the Little grasped the crown. This I set 
down as pure legend. Had I not seen young 
painters, poets, and musicians in baggy velvet 
trousers walk up and down the BouF Mich' 
during the exposition of 1878? And they still 
pranced about the cafes and brasseries in 1914, 
their hair as long as their thirst. There may 
be no Latin Quarter, but the Latin Quarter is 
ever in a young man's soul who goes to Paris 
in pursuit of the golden fleece of art. 

I recovered from the disillusionment and no 
more bothered my head about this pasteboard 
Bohemia than I did at the island of Marken 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

when I was told that its Dutch peasants with 
their picturesque costumes and head-dress were 
moonshine manufactured by an enterprising 
travel bureau to attract tourists. Are there 
not more Puritans in the West than in New 
England? But the loss of such a treasured il- 
lusion as our own East Side smote me severely. 
When young and buoyant one illusion crowds 
out another. After you have crossed the great 
divide of fifty, with the mountains of the moon 
behind you, and an increasing waist measure- 
ment before you, the annulment of a cherished 
image wounds the soul. 

The East Side with its Arabian Nights enter- 
tainment was such an image. Twenty years 
ago you could play the role of the disguised 
Sultan and with a favourite Vizier sally forth 
at eve from Park Row in pursuit of strange ad- 
ventures. What thrilHng encounters ! What 
hairbreadth escapes ! What hand-to-hand strug- 
gles with genii, afrits, imps — bottle-imps, very 
often — dangerous bandits, perilous policemen 
and nymphs or thrice dangerous anarchists ! 
To slink down an ill-lighted, sinister alley full 
of Chinese and American tramps, to hurry by 
solitary policemen as if engaged in some criminal 
enterprise, to enter the abode of them that never 
wash, where bad beer and terrible tobacco filled 
the air with discordant perfumes — ah ! what 
joys for adventurous souls, what tremendous 
dawns over Williamsburg, what glorious head- 
aches were ours on awakening the next night ! 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

An East Side there was in those hardy times, 
and it was still virginal to settlement-workers, 
sociological cranks, impertinent reformers, self- 
advertising politicians, billionaire socialists, and 
the ubiquitous newspaper man. Magazine writ- 
ers had not topsyturvied the ideas of the tene- 
ment dwellers, nor were the street-cleaner, the 
Board of Health, and other destroyers of the 
picturesque in evidence. It was the dear old 
dirty, often disreputable, though never dull East 
Side; while now the sentimentalist feels a heart 
pang to see the order, the cleanliness, the wide 
streets, the playgrounds, the big boulevards, the 
absence of indigence that have spoiled the most 
interesting part of New York City. 

Well I remember the night, years ago, when 
finding ourselves in Tompkins Square we went 
across to Justus Schwab's and joined an an- 
archist meeting in full swing. There were no 
bombs, though there was plenty of beer. A more 
amiable and better-informed man than Schwab 
never trod carpet slippers. The discussions in 
German and English betrayed a culture not 
easily duplicated on the West Side — wherever 
that mysterious territory really is. Before 
Nietzsche's and Stirner's names were pronounced 
in our lecture-rooms they were familiarly quoted 
at Schwab's. By request I played The Mar- 
seillaise and The International Hymn on an old 
piano — smoke-stained, with rattling keys and a 
cracked tone — which stood at the rear upon 
a platform. All was peace and a flow of soul; 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

yet the place was raided before midnight and a 
band of indignant, also merry, prisoners marched 
to the police-station. Naturally no one was de- 
tained but Schwab. The police felt called upon 
to arrest somebody around Tompkins Square 
about once a month. Anarchist Outrages was 
the usual newspaper head-line. Why are the 
Mafia performers never called anarchs ? To-day 
the Black Hand terrorises a region where the 
bombs in the old times were manufactured of 
ink for the daily papers. They generally blow 
themselves up, these anarchists; but there is 
nothing adventurous in having an eye or a leg 
blown away by a Sicilian you have never seen. 
To be arrested twenty years ago for the ro- 
mantic crime of playing The Marseillaise on a 
badly tuned piano — is it any wonder I get sen- 
timental when I think of an East Side that is 
no more? Perhaps the younger generation, 
which Ibsen described as '^knocking," may have 
its nooks unknown to us, but the old fascina- 
tion has flown. 

Yet like the war-horse that is put out to grass 
and rears when it hears the tin dinner horn, we 
pricked ears on learning one summer afternoon 
that up on First Avenue there was a wonderful 
brew of beer to be had. Pilsner beer served 
across genuine Bohemian tables ! How the ru- 
mour came to my ears I've forgotten, but I 
was not long in sending its glad import over the 
telephone. Remember that we now dwell in a 
city where never before has so much badly kept 

6 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

beer been sold. The show-places are gaudy and 
Americanised. Fashionable slummers whose 
fathers wore leathern aprons and drank their 
beer from tin pails sip champagne at some noisy 
gilded cabarets or summer gardens to the bang- 
ing and scraping of fake gipsy orchestras. 
Where are the small old-fashioned beer saloons 
of yesteryear with the sanded floor, the pinochle 
players, and the ripe, pure beverage? Indeed, 
the German element on the East Side is in the 
minority. At least it seems so, for your ear- 
drums are pelted by Bohemian, Yiddish, Hun, 
ItaHan, Russian, and other tongues. Many 
speak German, some sort of German, but the 
original Germans, the Urdeutsch who came to 
America more than half a century ago, are dead 
or decaying; their sons and daughters and 
grandchildren have moved into more fashion- 
able districts and shudder if you mention the 
name of Goethe. 

At first the Professor demurred. He is not 
timid, but a creature of habit. To tell him the 
news fraught with significance that you could 
imbibe foamy nectar while sitting on a high 
stool in front of a bar, a real, pleasant Bohemian 
facing you, your elbows occasionally joggled by 
visiting ''growlers," did not appeal to my book- 
ish friend as I had expected. I routed the 
Painter den, and by combined assault we carried 
the Professor up- town. 

"Get off," I said, "at Seventy-second Street 
and walk across to First Avenue." 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

We did so. The prosperity of the neighbour- 
hood after we crossed Third Avenue was posi- 
tively dispiriting. First Avenue we discovered to 
be wider than Broadway. Oddly enough, human 
beings like ourselves passed to and fro. It was 
the hottest hour of the afternoon. The world 
in shirt-sleeves sat perched upon steps or chairs, 
lounged in doorways watching the multitudi- 
nous babies that rolled over the sidewalk. The 
east side of the avenue was deserted, for the 
sun beat upon the walls and reverberated blind- 
ing rays. Of drunkenness we saw none. We 
were in the Bohemian quarter. At Sokol Hall 
on Seventy-third Street there were a few pool 
games in progress; no one stood at the bar. I 
was the spokesman: 

*' Isn't there," I said in my choicest Marien- 
bad Bohemian, "isn't there a remarkable Pils- 
ner Urquell somewhere in this neighbourhood?" 

"We also sell Pilsner," was the Slavic, eva- 
sive answer of a bartender with the mask of a 
tragic actor. 

"Oh, he means Joe's," interrupted a sym- 
pathetic bystander. "Of course, Joe keeps the 
dandy beer." 

To this there would be but one reply. We 
stood treat to the house and went to Kasper's, 
followed at a discreet distance by several patriots. 

By this time the Professor's collar and tem- 
per were running a race for the wilting sweep- 
stakes. Joe was pleased to see us. We sat on 
the celebrated high stools at the bar, and Gam- 

8 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

brinus would have been satisfied. It was the 
essence of Pilsen, Prague, Marienbad, all in a 
large glass. Joe discoursed. He was proud that 
we liked his interpretation of the wet blond 
masterpiece; but not too proud. You can't 
spoil Joe. He is a wary and travelled man. 
His son, born here, he tells you with ill-con- 
cealed affection, is a viohnist, a pupil at Vienna 
of Sevic, the great teacher of Kubelik, of Ko- 
cian ! Who knows whether another K may not 
be added to this group. We drink his health 
and venture the hope that the triumph of the 
youthful Kasper will not put into the head of 
the father any futile notion of retiring. Art is 
all very well. VioHn virtuosi abound; but few 
men there are who know the subtle science of 
keeping beer at a proper temperature. 

''Look here," cried the Professor, "this is nice, 
but how about the East Side that you are going 
to show us, the East Side which is not in exis- 
tence?" 

I suggested that we were on the East Side, 
up-town, to be sure, nevertheless East Side. 

"I want to see the East Side of George Luks, 
and please spare us your antiquated memories. 
George Moore knows how to relate memories 
of his dead Hfe, but you don't. Let's be going." 
It was the Professor in his most didactic mood. 

The Painter who was comfortably anchored, 
sighed profoundly. He didn't need to leave a 
snug harbour to see the East Side of George 
Luks. To my remonstrances and heated asser- 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

tion that there was no more East Side, that it 
was only a fable, the Professor bristled up Hke 
the Celt he is. ''What, then, is the use of 
writing about a thing that no longer exists? 
Or, as Israel Zangwill asks in the form of a 
magnificent pun, 'What's the use of being a 
countess if you have nothing to count.'" This 
was too much, and in less than an hour we were 
threading the intricacies of Grand Street, head- 
ing for the region of socialistic rainbows. 

"They're off!" chuckled the Painter as he 
drew forth his sketching pad and pencil. 

After a tolerably long tramp we turned south. 
The street was narrow and not too odorous. 
High buildings on either side were pierced by 
numerous windows from which hung frowzy 
ladies, usually with babies at their bosoms; the 
fire-escapes were crowded with bedclothes, the 
middle of the street filled with quarrelling chil- 
dren. The national game on a miniature scale 
was in progress, and on the sidewalks when the 
push-cart men permitted, encouraging voices 
called aloud in Yiddish to the baseball heroes. 
I don't know what they said, but I caught such 
phrases as these: ''Yakie ! Schlemil ! machen Sie 
dot first base ! Esel ! Oh, du ! " And the little 
Jacob toiled up the street and down again, 
sprawKng over garbage-cans, upsetting two girls 
dressed in resplendent ribbons for Shabbas, fi- 
\ nally touching an old basket and getting full 
in his smudged features a soft tomato. "Aus !" 
yelled the umpire who was immediately kicked 

lO 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

in the stomach. ''Aus! Out!" came in deliri- 
ous tones from a dancing mass of men — Jewish 
men with the traditional whiskers, brown straw 
hats, and alpaca coats. It was startHng even 
to the Professor. 

"There is your twentieth-century East Side 
for you," I began, but the Painter watched 
other things. 

*'Yet they think Luks is too reahstic, don't 
they? Just look at those girls." He pointed 
out a red-headed Irish girl clutching a blonde 
girl, unmistakably a German blonde, who were 
both dreamily waltzing to the faded tune of 
The Merry Widow. 

Music which we hurry from across town is 
near the East River music the conqueror. It mel- 
lows the long hours of dry, dusty summer days, 
and it sets moving in earnest if not graceful 
rhythms the legs of the Httle ones. Suddenly 
the organ began a gallop. Off whisked the girls 
— DeHa and Marike were their names, we were 
later informed — off they went like two aban- 
doned spielers disguised as children of poverty. 
What movement ! What fire ! The blonde 
with her silvery locks stamped and whirled off 
her feet the trim Irish girl with the dark red 
curls. 

"Are you chaps never coming along?" asked 
the Professor. "It will be night soon, and we 
haven't seen anything yet." 

"He's afraid Mouquin's will close before he 
gets back to civilisation," sardonically whis- 

II 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

pered the Painter. Luckily the Professor didn't 
hear. 

The cafe was not well lighted. At the marble 
tables stooped the bent backs of old men, men 
who wore curls over their ears, whose hats were 
only removed at bedtime. They played chess 
in the dusk and drank coffee at intervals, re- 
garding their neighbours suspiciously. Rem- 
brandt would have admired the dim, misty 
corners where on musty divans he could have 
discerned a head, partly in shadow, a high hght 
on the bridge of the nose, or fingers snapping 
with exultation in a sudden shaft of sunlight 
that came through a window opening on the 
west. Groups of two or three hovered about 
the players. The stillness was punctuated by 
street cries and the occasional rumbhng of 
that ramshackle horse-car the sight of which 
sends your wits wool-gathering back to the 
'8o's. 

^'Wake up," urged the Painter. "I'm going 
to sketch that table in the corner; the two old 
birds are watching each other as if plunder were 
hid somewhere. You know they are afraid to 
drink beer because a drop too much might lose 
them a move. So they stick to coffee." He 
went away, the Professor following. 

*'Is your friend a painter or only one of those 
newspaper artists who worry us so much?" 

I turned. Beside me sat a mythical old fel- 
low, white-haired, his coat buttoned to his neck, 
no shirt, evidently, and the hand which plucked 

12 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

his beard as white as a girl's — a girl who has 
white hands, I mean. 

*'You look like the Ancient Mariner," I said, 
"or a Hebraic Walt Whitman." 

He smiled. "I may be both for all you 
know; but you haven't answered my ques- 
tion." 

He inclined a benevolent ear. I informed 
him of our mission and of my disappointment. 
Again the smile, a smile as ancient as the world 
and as fresh as to-morrow. 

"It is this way," he confided, and his deep- 
set eyes sparkled. "You are an idealist. Wait 
until you are seasoned by eighty years. I am 
eighty, and I've lived on the so-called East 
Side for sixty of my years. I speak EngHsh 
better than I do Yiddish, yet to earn my bread 
I write Yiddish plays, stories, love-letters, and 
would preach if my voice would hold out. I 
am an ex-rabbi. You know what a rabbi is; 
you are old enough. An ex-anything is a mis- 
take — particularly an ex-dramatic critic or an 
ex-president." 

"You must have seen many changes in your 
life over here," I ventured. 

"My friend, I have seen many changes, yet 
nothing changes. We are born, live more or 
less unhappily, and die. That's all. There are 
more of my co-religionists now than there were 
when we first went up the Bowery. Then they 
pulled my beard and threw stones at us. Now 
we Hve in houses built, perhaps, with those very 

13 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

stones; certainly built by our forbearance. We 
live " 

He prosed on. He bored me, this octogena- 
rian who resembled both the Ancient Mariner 
and Walt Whitman. I stopped his rambhng 
by asking: *'I suppose the Sociahsts and settle- 
ment-workers have greatly improved the East 
Side?" 

He sat up and roared hke an approaching 
earthquake. The chess-players looked at him, 
shrugged shoulders, and again tackled their 
problems. The Professor deserted the Painter 
and tiptoed out to us. The Painter never 
budged. 

'^ Sociahsts! What are they? They have 
stirred up my people with empty words, fine 
phrases. Oh, the dreamers of the Ghetto. 
This idea of an earthly paradise you may trace 
back to the Persians, to the Babylonians, per- 
haps to the Sumerians. We are always looking 
for the coming of him who will rescue us. We 
are the idealistic leaven in whatever national 
bakery we find ourselves. You Americans are 
smarter. When the dollars arrive you are satis- 
fied; it is your heaven on earth; but for the 
poor, who know nothing, have nothing, golden 
words fill them with hope. Better prisons than 
those slimy deceptions of socialism. Yes, our 
girls marry rich Goyem, rich gentiles — let a 
woman alone for finding a tub of butter — and 
then they come down here, some to hve and 
work — their tongue — and tell more lies to 

14 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

dreamers. Ach ! it is awful. And your settle- 
ment-workers, the white mice, we call them. 
They mean well, but they are generally mis- 
guided busybodies. They pry, pry, pry, and 
ask insulting questions. Even if we are poor 
we are humans; we have feelings too. If a 
Jew is pious they give him a New Testament. 
They bore or frighten our wives, though they 
do a lot of good, helping the hungry poor. Yet 
children go to school hungry. Don't believe al- 
together in those sights of big new tenements, 
playgrounds, public schools; there is a lot of 
misery on your renovated East Side that your 
philanthropists never reach, that those funny 
sociological students never see." 

I rose. 

"Break away!" said the Painter. "I caught 
the old prophet in my note-book while he was 
gassing. Let's get out of here." 

I bade farewell to the venerable Jeremiah. 
He looked sadly after us. Not a drink, not a 
smoke — nothing ! And all that wisdom dissi- 
pated into thin air, or into ears that heeded not. 
I was glad when we passed through the narrow 
doorway obstructed by a wretched rubber plant 
— or was it a hat-rack ? 

Without the sky seemed rolled back from 
the roofs and was a deep blue transfused by the 
citron- tin ted afterglow of a setting sun. On the 
street were the fuliginous oil-lamps of peddlers. 
The din was terrific ; it mingled with the smell of 
fish, fruit, and grease. A motley mob jostled 

15 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

us from the pavements; the middle was the 
safest roadway. An old woman who sat comb- 
ing her thin grey hair directed us westward; 
we thought we had lost our bearings. Slat- 
ternly females chaffered with the Jewish and 
Italian push-cart men. Their gestures were not 
unlike; southern Europe and remotest Russia 
employ the sign language, a voluble digital lan- 
guage it is. Shrieks of laughter and dismay at- 
tracted us farther up. A dwarf with a big 
head and dressed in the uniform of the Salva- 
tion Army was hemmed in by half a hundred 
teasing children of all nationahties. I assure 
you that I saw white girls with Chinese slitted 
eyes, little Irish girls with the Hebraic nose 
curve, negro boys with straight hair and blue 
eyes. A vast cauldron — every race bubbles and 
boils and fuses on the East Side. The children 
are happy. They are noisy and devilish in their 
energy. They howled at the dwarf, " Pee Wee ! " 
He was impassive and distributed circulars. In 
front of a kosher fowl shop another small cy- 
clone was in progress. The place was locked, 
but in the gashght we could detect hundreds of 
chickens hopping over the counter and shelves, 
and the joy their antics gave the little ones 
outside was worth a dozen Christmas panto- 
mimes. 

"To the Hall of Genius, that's where we are 
heading, boys !" answered the Painter to a query 
from the Professor. 

I had now become the crusty member of the 

i6 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

crowd. I was tired. The coffee at the chess 
cafe had given me a headache; besides, things 
were not exactly going my way. I came out 
on this expedition prepared to scoff, and while 
I had not remained to pray, nevertheless was 
I disappointed. So I irritably inquired : ''What 
Hall of Genius? What new pipe-dream is 
this?" 

Good-temperedly he returned: ''It is a pipe- 
dream, and before we go up Second Avenue I 
want you to see what you can't see anywhere 
outside Paris." 

"The Latin Quarter?" I sneered. 

"No; Montmartre. Now just hustle along, 
please. It is getting late and I'm hungry." 

As we entered the hall the buzzing of voices 
was almost deafening. At least a hundred 
tables were crowded with men and women. 
On the balconies were more tables. Every one 
was drinking either coffee or beer; the men 
smoked pipes, cigarettes, with here and there a 
few cigars. The odour was appalling. I never 
knew Mother Earth grew such poisonous, weedy 
tobaccos. We found seats not far from the 
door. 

"It's easier to escape," remarked our guide, 
philosopher, and friend, "and it's easier to point 
out the celebrities." 

"What celebrities?" faintly inquired the Pro- 
fessor, who was almost a physical wreck. 

"Celebrities!" was the response. "Well, I 
should say so. There's enough brains and ge- 

17 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

nius under this roof at the present moment to 
burn up our universities, our musical conserva- 
tories, our paint-pot academies" — here the 
Painter paused, I fancied maliciously — '^our 
law courts." 

''But why, why haven't we heard of these 
transcendent individuals?" I interposed. 

''Over there," continued the Painter, not 
heeding my question, "over there is a young 
fellow who has written the best short story 
since Edgar Poe. It's so good no one dreams 
of printing it." 

"There are a hundred hke him who have 
written the best story since Poe — only they 
hug the Great White Way," hinted the Pro- 
fessor cynically. 

The Painter gave him a sour look. 

"Never mind. I'm teUing this story. The 
fellow I mean is bald. That's why he keeps 
his hat on. But the remnants of his hair are 
curly." 

"I dare him to remove his hat." The Pro- 
fessor it was who spoke. I kicked him under 
the table. 

"That fat youth yonder," tranquilly resumed 
the Painter, "is a second Ernest Lawson. He 
never saw a Lawson landscape because he never 
got farther than Second Avenue. His clothes, 
as you see, are not suitable; but if he ever 
starts in painting as he can ["But won't," 
cruelly intercalated the Professor] — then he 
may join the Academy." 

i8 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

"Fudge," said I. 

''Fudge or not, he is a genius. He works, 
when he does work, in a carriage factory. His 
friend is the grandest dramatist of the age, 
without a Broadway production. It's a pity 
he can only write in Bulgarian. The woman 
sitting near him has Duse, Bernhardt, and Na- 
zimova beaten to a pulp as actresses." 

The Professor stood up wearily. 

*'Now I'm going," he said. ''I suppose you 
will show us next the most extraordinary com- 
poser on the planet." 

''Precisely," acquiesced the Painter. "To 
your left is a Russian pianist who has the charm 
of Paderewski, the magic of Joseffy, the tech- 
nique of Rosenthal, and the caprice of De Pach- 
mann." 

We paid the reckoning. Catching our waiter 
by his tin badge I asked him as my friends moved 
streetward: "Who are those folks at the next 
table ? Are they poets or painters or musicians ? ' ' 

"Nichts! Your friend was having fun with 
you," answered the waiter. "They are nearly all 
cloakmakers, and work in the neighbourhood." 

"Oh, hollow East Side ! Oh, humbugPainter ! " 
I ejaculated when we reached Second Avenue and 
its cool, well-lighted perspectives. The Painter 
smiled. 

"I faked you a bit of the East Side you writ- 
ing fellows are always looking for. Now for 
dinner." 

We ate paprika-seasoned food to the clangour 

19 



THE FABULOUS EAST SIDE 

of the usual gipsy band that never saw the 
Hungarian Putzta. It was at one of the tinsel 
Bohemias so plentifully scattered along the 
avenue. I was better satisfied than earlier in 
the evening, for I had proved that the old East 
Side was fabulous. I said as much, and was 
called ungrateful. 

*' Isn't it interesting, anyhow?" demanded in 
unison Professor and Painter. 

We were about to part at the corner of the 
street. It was midnight. Suddenly a thin, 
scared voice asked us to buy flowers. The girl 
was small. She wore a huge shawl, and on her 
head was a shapeless hat over which lolled queer 
plants. But that shawl ! It was fit for her fat 
grandmother and must have weighed heavily 
upon her frail shoulders. Her features were not 
easy to distinguish ; her eyes seemed mere empty 
sockets. 

The Painter looked at her. 

"What you got under that shawl?" he sharply 
questioned. 

The wretched child shifted her feet. " A pussy- 
cat I found on Second Street. I'm taking it 
home fer me sisters." 

We bought her ridiculous flowers and she 
disappeared. 

"A regular Luks," I observed. 

"A Luks all right, all right," chimed in the 
Painter. 

We went home. 



20 



II 

THE LUNGS 



A BROAD chest usually means healthy lungs. 
Now, Manhattan Island is notoriously narrow- 
chested. Her scanty space across is not re- 
deemed by greater length. Crowded with hu- 
mans and their houses, there is consequently 
little space for the expansion of her normal 
breathing powers. Her lungs, i. e., her parks, 
are contracted and not enough of them; there 
never will be. But more than some people 
think. 

New Yorkers, even the most convinced cock- 
neys, know little of their city, or of its lungs. 
Not only provincial, but parochial, they are 
only acquainted with the square or little park 
that adorns — it's a poor park that doesn't 
bring a sense of adornment — their native ward. 
Imagine my amazement when I learned after 
nearly thirty years' residence here that there 
were one hundred and eighty-two parks in the 
five boroughs. I read it in a newspaper and 
couldn't understand why I hadn't discovered the 
fact, for I've always been a rambler and my 
happy hunting-ground usually has been the East 
Side. 

21 



THE LUNGS 

However, seeing is believing, and last summer, 
with my eyes made innocent by several years' 
residence in Germany, Austria, Holland, Bel- 
gium, France, and England, I determined to 
verify certain vague suspicions that had been 
assailing my consciousness: that perhaps New 
York was not inferior in attractiveness to Lon- 
don, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or Brussels. Per- 
haps many who go down to the sea in steamers, 
their pockets filled with letters of credit, might be 
equally shocked when confronted by the sights 
and sounds of Manhattan. Perhaps — but let 
us start on a little tour into intimate New York, 
without a megaphone or a ready-made enthu- 
siasm; above all, let us be meek and avoid 
boastful rhetoric; also dodge statistics. Go to 
the guide-books, thou sluggard, for the latter ! 

When a writer tackles such a big theme as 
New York he as a rule fetches a deep breath 
in the lower bay, steams as far as Staten Island, 
and then lets loose the flood-gate of adjectives. 
How the city looks as you enter it is the con- 
ventional point of attack. I am sorry to say 
that whenever I have returned from Europe, 
the first peep of lower Manhattan, with its 
craggy battlements, its spires splintering the 
very firmament, and the horrid Statue of Lib- 
erty, all these do so work on my spirit that I 
feel like repining. Not because I am home 
again — not, my friend, because the spectacle 
is an uphfting one, but, shame that I must con- 
fess the truth, because my return means back to 

22 



THE LUNGS 

toil, back to the newspaper forge, there to re- 
sume my old job of wordsmith. Why, the very 
symbol of liberty, that stupid giant female, with 
her illuminating torch, becomes a monster of 
hated mien, her torch a club that ominously 
threatens us: Get to work ! Get to work ! 

Therefore I'll begin at Battery Park, leaving 
the waterways, the arteries and veins of the 
city, for a future disquisition. 

The image stamped on my memory is the re- 
verse of the immobile. A plastic picture. The 
elevated roads debouching here are ugly, but 
characteristic. I'm afraid I can't see in our 
city anything downright ugly — it is never an 
absolute for me; as Dostoievsky said, there are 
no ugly women. The elevated road structure 
is hideous if aesthetically considered, and that is 
precisely the way it should not be considered. 
It rolls thousands daily to this end of the town; 
they usually take the ferries or subways, a few 
stroll under the scanty trees, or visit the Aqua- 
rium, so we must be critically charitable, too. 

Oh, how tired I am of being told that Jenny 
Lind made her debut in this same Castle Gar- 
den, "presented" by the late Phineas T. Bar- 
num ! Wasn't it a historical fort before it 
became a hall of immigrants and the abode of 
the fishes? This much may be said for the 
latter — it is a real aquarium, and, excepting 
the absence of an octopus or two, the collection 
rivals those at Brighton, England (where there 
are octopi); Naples, Hamburg, and elsewhere. 

23 



THE LUNGS 

More exciting than the fish, the seal, or the por- 
poises are the people. Thousands elbow through 
the rather narrow aisles and stare as solemnly 
at the finny inhabitants as they are stared at 
in return. The sightseeing coaches give their 
passengers a quarter of an hour's grace to 'Mo'* 
the show, while ragged boys dance about them, 
obsequiously pilot them, .mock them, quite after 
the manner of the ragged boy on the Marina 
at Naples. 

A veritable boon is this open Battery Park 
when the gang of wage-earners have fled the 
lower reaches of the city, when the dishes have 
been washed, when the janitors and caretakers 
of the tall buildings bring their wives and chil- 
dren to catch the breeze from the bay. On 
moonlit nights there are few situations more ro- 
mantic. Here is freedom for the eye, for the 
lungs. There are not enough benches, but the 
walking is good, and to stand on the edge of 
the ''wharf" and watch the bright eyes of fer- 
ries, the blazing eyes of the Jersey and Brooklyn 
shores, and the eyes of Staten Island as the un- 
stable floor of the water mirrors (a cracked 
mirror) the moonlight and distorts the tiny 
flames about it, is to enjoy a spectacle fit for 
men and women who are not afraid to love 
their birthplace. I like it better when the 
weather has a nipping freshness and the day is 
grey-coloured and full of the noises of broken 
waters, and the cry of birds. 

The seamy side of Battery Park is the poor 

24 



THE LUNGS 

castaway who has sought its coolness after a 
hot day of panhandling. But — given a cer- 
tain amount of leeway — he is harmless. When 
a woman, the case assumes the pathetic. Beg- 
ging is semisecretly indulged in. You drop 
your nickel and escape. If it be daytime you 
make for South Street to pay that long-deferred 
visit to Coenties Slip and Jeannette Park. 

Perhaps you have seen C. F. W. Mielatz's 
coloured etching of the slip; if you have, the 
optical repercussion will be all the stronger when 
looking at the place itself. The fine old musty 
flavour of the slip, the canal-boats near the little 
Jeannette Park — a backwater with its stranded 
humanity stolidly waiting for something to turn 
up — and the lofty, lowering warehouses bring 
memories of London docks; docks where slunk 
Rogue Riderhood in search of rum after he had 
landed his dead cargo; docks from which sailed, 
still sail, wooden ships with real wooden masts, 
canvas sails, and sailors of flesh and blood, 
bound on some secret errand to southern seas 
where under the large few stars they may mu- 
tiny and cut the captain's throat; or else return 
to live immortally in fascinating legends of Jo- 
seph Conrad. I almost became sentimental over 
Coenties Slip, probably because Mielatz had 
etched it, and also because I had been reading 
Conrad. Art always reacts on nature, and the 
reactions may be perfectly sincere. 

However, I thought it time to ask a policeman 
the direction of Corlears Park. He didn't know. 

25 



THE LUNGS 

No one knew, until an old chap who smelt of 
of fish and whisky said: ''It's Cor-lears, you 
want?" I had misplaced the accent, and the 
ear of the average longshoreman in South Street 
for quantity would please a college professor of 
Greek. 

I went my winding way, finally enlightened. 
I like the London bobby, for he is obhging and 
instructive, but I also Hke our policeman. He 
is gruffer than his English contemporary — a 
shy sort of gruffness. I found myself at Canal 
Street and the Bowery — I don't know why — 
and^ was told to continue eastward. If I had 
taken a Grand Street car to the ferry my journey 
would have been simplified, but then I should 
have missed East Broadway and a lot of sights, 
of which more anon. 

I dived into the east. It was a noisy, nar- 
row lane rather than a street, and the inhabi- 
tants, mostly babies, were sprawling over the 
sidewalks. Often I followed the hne of the gut- 
ter. Then I reached an open space and was 
disappointed. It was Corlears Park, and the 
absence of shade was painful. This lack of trees 
is a fault to be found in the majority of mu- 
nicipal parks and playgrounds. Night, if you 
don't feel too scared or lonely, is the proper 
time to enjoy the Hook. The view of the East 
River is unimpeded. The water is crowded 
with craft. A breeze always fans one. Women 
and children, principally Itahans and Jews, sit 
or walk. Cats are friendly. So is the small 

26 



THE LUNGS 

boy who knocks off your straw tile with his 
stick. A venerable steamboat, rotting and dis- 
mal, the relic of a once proud excursion career, 
is warped to the wharf. It has flowers on its 
upper deck, and pale, sick people sit on the 
lower. You are informed by the inevitable 
busybody who traipses after strangers that the 
old boat is now for tuberculosis patients, living 
or d}dng, in the neighbourhood. What an end- 
ing for man and machine ! Hecker's huge struc- 
ture dominates the upper end of the park, as 
does Hoe's building over in Grand Street. The 
chief thing is the cleanliness and spaciousness. 
The same may be found at Rutgers Park, but 
without a water-front, always an added attrac- 
tion. 

Tompkins Square stirred memories. It lies 
between Seventh and Tenth Streets and Ave- 
nues A and B. When I first remember it, it was 
also called the Weisse- Garten, and no foreign 
nationahty but German lived on its arid fringes. 

The anarchists of those days gathered at Jus- 
tus Schwab's, whose saloon was on First Street. 
There I first became acquainted with Johann 
Most, an intelligent and stubborn man, if ever 
there was one, and other "reds," the majority of 
them now dead. I remember, in 1887, the fu- 
neral parade in commemoration of the anarchists 
executed in Chicago because of the Haymarket 
affair. A sombre procession of proletarians with 
muffled drums, black flags, and dense masses of 
humans. I didn't go home that night. To my 

27 



THE LUNGS 

surprise I found the old-fashioned bird store — 
where they once sold folding bird-cages (col- 
lapsible) — in the same place, on Avenue A, near 
Seventh Street. The park is mightily improved. 
There are more trees, and also playgrounds for 
boys and girls, a band-stand, and refreshment 
pavilions. 

I entered. On the benches I found '^ lobbies" 
of old men, Germans, Israelites for the most 
part. They were very old, very active, con- 
tented, and loquacious. They settled at a 
"sitzung" the affairs of the nation, keeping all 
the while a sharp lookout on the antics of their 
grandchildren, curly-haired, bright-eyed kiddies 
who rolled on the grass. The boys and girls 
literally made the welkin ring with their games, 
in the enclosures. They seemed healthy and 
happy. There are vice and poverty on the East 
Side — and the West — but there are also youth 
and decency and pride. I should say that 
optimism was the rule. Naturally, in summer, 
even poverty wears its rue with a difference. I 
saw little save cheerfulness, and heard much 
music-making by talented children. 

The Tenth Street side of Tompkins Square 
reminds me of upper Stuyvesant Square. It is 
positively well-to-do, many doctors and dentists 
hanging out their shingles on the quaint, pleas- 
ant-looking brick houses. A very old German 
Lutheran meeting-house is at the corner of Ninth 
Street and Avenue B, and one block lower is 
St. Bridget's Church. Not afar is a synagogue 

28 



THE LUNGS 

or ''Shool," as they call it, and you may catch 
a glimpse of the stately Church of the Holy 
Redeemer on Third Street near Avenue A, with 
its cartridge-shaped spire (easily seen from Brook- 
lyn Bridge), that suggests shooting the soul to 
heaven if you are willing. 

Time was when the Felsenkeller, at the foot 
of Fifty-seventh Street, East River, was an agree- 
able spot of summer nights. It was an open-air 
cafe, and while sipping your beverage you could 
watch the wheels of passing steamboats. It ex- 
ists no longer. You must go up to East River 
Park, at Eighty-sixth Street and the river, or to 
Jefferson Park, opposite Ward's Island, to enjoy 
the water. There are little grassy hills, with 
rocks, at the former park that give you the illu- 
sion of nature. 

I can't say much in favor of Union Square 
— now hopelessly encumbered with debris — 
or of Gramercy Park, locked to the public (you 
are permitted the barren enjoyment of gazing at 
the bleak enclosure), or of Madison Square, with 
its wonderful surroundings. These be places 
familiar. Nor do I care to drag you over to 
Hudson Park, on the West Side, to Abingdon 
Square, to Chelsea, De Witt Clinton, Seward, 
to other parks of another kind duplicated 
everywhere, even to the scarcity of foliage and 
benches. Mount Morris Park, at One Hundred 
and Twenty-fourth Street and Madison Avenue, 
was, a few decades ago, not so crowded as it is 
to-day. The hegira up-town has made it as pop- 

29 



THE LUNGS 

ulous as Tompkins Square. And not so pleasant. 
A little cafe, with a back garden on the west 
side of the square, was once a favourite resort 
years ago. Schmierkase and pumpernickel, and 
— Tempus fugit ! 

n 

I positively refuse to sing the praises of Cen- 
tral Park — which was laid out in 1857 (avaunt, 
statistics !) — simply because that once haughty 
and always artificial dame is fast becoming an 
old lady in plain decadence. Who has not sung 
her praises ! Hardly a park, rather a cluster of 
graceful arboreal arabesques, which surprise and 
charm, Central Park is, nevertheless, moribund, 
and all the king's horses and all the king's jnen 
can never set her up again in her former estate. 
The city itself has assassinated her, not by official 
neglect, but by the proximity of stone, steel, and 
brick, which is slowly robbing her of her suste- 
nance of earth, air, and moisture. 

In the first flush of spring or a few early 
summer days she wears her old smile of bright- 
ness. How welcome the leafy arch of the Mall, 
how impressive, how '^European" the vista of 
the Bethesda fountain, the terrace, and the lake; 
how pleasing it is to sit under the arbour of the 
Casino piazza and watch the golden girls and 
slim gilt lads arrive in motor-cars! 

Then the Ramble, or the numerous bypaths 
that lead to the reservoir, or that give on the 
bridle-paths, wherein joyous youth with grooms 

30 



THE LUNGS 

flit by, or prosperous cits showing lean, crooked 
shanks painfully bump on horses too wide for 
them. Ah, yes ! Central Park will continue for 
years to furnish amusement (if that wretched 
Zoo were only banished to the Bronx !) and deep 
breathing for the lucky rider who lives on its 
borders. Also furnish fun for May parties, June 
walks, and July depredations. It is a miracle 
of landscape-gardening, notwithstanding its ab- 
sence of monotony — it abounds in too many 
twists and turns; it is seldom reposeful, because 
broad meadows are absent. You can't do much 
in decoration without flat surfaces. But what 
mortal could accomplish Frederick Law Olmsted 
and Calvert Vaux accomplished; the impend- 
ing ruin is the result of pitiless natural causes. 

I once said that one can't be a flaneur in a 
city without trees. New York is almost tree- 
less, and Central Park soon will be. When not 
so long ago I saluted the ObeHsk on the Thames 
embankment, that antique and morose stylite 
sent its regards to its brother in our Park. 
Some day when the last Yankee (the breed is 
rapidly running out) will look at the plans of 
what was once Central Park, hanging in the 
Metropolitan Museum, his eye will caress the 
Obelisk across the way. That strange shaft 
will endure when New York is become an abom- 
ination and a desolation. 

Arthur Brisbane's notion that the nasty little 
lakes and water pools be drained and refilled 
with salt water for bathing purposes is a capi- 

31 



THE LUNGS . 

tal one. Gone at a swoop malaria and evil 
odours; gone, too, the mosquitoes which make 
life miserable for nigh dwellers. But the park 
is doomed ; let us enjoy its ancient bravery while 
we may. 

I never skated at Van Cortlandt Park, be- 
cause I can't skate; but I love the spot, love 
the old mansion and its relics, love the open 
feeling about it. Atop of the highest part of 
the island is Isham Park. To reach it get off 
at the Two Hundred and Seventh Street Sub- 
way station and walk westwardly up the hill, or 
through Isham Street. On the brow is the little 
park, looking up and down the Hudson and 
across Spuyten Duyvil. A rare spot to watch 
aeroplane races. Not far away is the Billings 
castle, and across the Fort Washington Road 
the studio and Gothic cloisters of the sculptor 
George Grey Barnard. 

Often have I enjoyed the Zoological Garden 
in the Bronx, the Botanical Garden, and the 
Bronx Park. Our Zoo is easily the largest and 
most complete in the world. I've visited all 
the European Zoos, from Amsterdam and Ham- 
burg to Vienna and Budapest. As for the Bo- 
tanical Garden, I have the famous botanist 
Hugo de Vries of Amsterdam as a witness, who 
told me he would be happy to Hve near it al- 
ways. The Bronx River is an ''intimate" creek 
and malodorous, but do you remember what 
cunning Kttle French restaurants were in vogue 
up there two or three decades ago? F. Hop- 

32 



THE LUNGS 

kinson Smith celebrated one of them in a short 
story. To-day they charge you more for wine 
and cookery that are inferior to the old-time 
establishments. Or has Time intervened with 
its soft pedal on the gustatory sense? I don't 
believe it. The enjoyment of the table is the 
longest surviving of the sociable peccadillos, and 
nothing can prove to me that either my Bur- 
gundy or my Bordeaux palate has deteriorated. 
But if I get on the subject of food we shall never 
see Pelham Parkway. 

I didn't drive the devil wagon, else I should 
never have seen what I did — at least not in 
such brief time and in such a pleasant way. 
For ten hours my friend wheeled me up Tre- 
mont Avenue, the Southern Boulevard — and 
such boulevards ! — to Pelham Parkway, with 
the park of one thousand seven hundred acres 
and more (I read this in a guide-book) up from 
the Harlem River, through magnificent shore 
and country, the Sound in sight, and a general 
sense of being in a primeval forest that had been 
cultivated by super-apes. On grey days the 
mist along the sedge grass of the water evokes 
delightful melancholy. We whizzed through 
towns I had heard of but never visited. Oh, 
shame ! Think of Mount Vernon, Yonkers, Ir- 
vington, and Tarrytown ! All new to this des- 
perate cockney. 

However, it was Pelham Bay that set me 
shouting. There's a park for you ! The entire 
cityful could go out there, hold a cyclopean 

33 



THE LUNGS 

picnic, and have plenty of room to turn around 
in. It is not Fairmount Park, for that is the 
largest in the East, but it's the nearest thing 
to it. It is the combination of water and woods 
that is attractive. The Philadelphia park has 
the same, but on a vaster scale. Of European 
parks I can recall none that approaches Pelham 
— the Boboli Gardens and Cascine at Florence, 
Hyde, Regent, St. James's, and other London 
Parks, the Bois, Tuileries, and the Jardin d'Ac- 
climatation, Paris, the Prater, Vienna (a lovely 
spot), Charlottenburg Chaussee, Berlin — none 
of these matches Pelham Parkway. The auto- 
mobiles seem to eat space on the smooth road- 
beds. When the projected Bronx Parkway is 
an accomplished fact, the motorists ought to be 
forever satisfied. 

We crossed from the Sound over to the Hud- 
son on excellent roads. I began to wonder why 
any one could abide living in Gotham when 
such a delectable land of milk and honey is so 
near. I have noticed that when I ride in an- 
other man's motor-car I feel optimistic and in- 
clined to see the '^slaves of toil" in a rosy mood. 
And this mood was not banished by our arrival 
at the Sleepy Hollow Club. From its terraced 
lawns the Hudson may be viewed in all its maj- 
esty. This former home of Elliott F. Shepard 
is a palace, and, forgetting the joys and woes of 
Corlears Hook and Tompkins Square, I trained 
my eyes on the prospect. There is justice in 
the boast that nowhere may be seen such an 

34 



THE LUNGS 

extraordinary collocation of the grandiose and 
the familiar in landscape and waterscape. The 
Rhine is domestic, colloquial by comparison. 
Down the Danube at the Iron Gates there is 
some hint of the dazzling perspectives of Pali- 
sades and Hudson, but there again the barbaric 
note sounds too loud in the symphony of rugged 
rocks and vegetation. And great Highland Park, 
Bear's Nose, the new State Park, gift of Mrs. 
Harriman — what a wealth of natural park 
lands ! When the wicked blasters blast no 
more, restrained from sinful destruction by the 
law courts (when?), and there are better trav- 
elling faciHties, the Palisades side of the river 
will entertain thousands where to-day it hardly 
counts its hundreds. 

We flew along the riverside. I had renounced 
all hope of seeing Jerome Park, St. Mary's, 
Claremont, and Crotona Parks, or even the little 
Poe Park at Fordham — we had passed High 
Bridge, Fort Washington, and Macomb's Dam 
Parks earlier — and farther down I had often 
visited Morris Heights and Audubon Park, but 
I was consoled by the sharp contrasts of the 
shifting landscape. Of course, there was a 
''panne" on upper Broadway, a burst tire, and 
the ensuing boredom, but nothing lasts, even 
impatience, and soon we were through Yonkers, 
and then across the city line past Palisades Park, 
with its lights, and, finally, on Riverside Drive, 
surely vantage-ground from which the ravishing 
spectacle of down-river may be enjoyed. 

35 



THE LUNGS 

It would be unjust to pass City Hall and its 
park, not because it allures — it does not — but 
because City Hall is the priceless gem in our 
architectural tiara. Buried as it is by the pat- 
ronising bulk and height of its neighbours, it 
more than holds its own in dignity, simplicity, 
and pure linear beauty — qualities conspicuous 
by their absence in the adjacent parvenu 
structures. 

Nor must I miss Prospect Park, Brooklyn, 
near enough to reach in a half-hour, and from 
the grassy knolls of which the turrets and pin- 
nacles of Manhattan may be seen. It is far 
more captivating than Central Park, and the 
Flatbush Avenue entrance reminds one of some 
vast plaza in a European capital, upper Brus- 
sels, for example. It is imposing with its Mac- 
Monnies monument, its spaciousness, and gen- 
eral decorative effect — an effect enhanced by 
the Italianate water-tower and the Museum far- 
ther down, whose vast galleries house so Httle 
original art, with the exception of the Sargent 
water-colours and former Chapman pictures. It 
is only fair to add that Prospect Park began 
with natural advantages superior to Central 
Park, advantages made the most of. This park 
really makes Brooklyn habitable and not merely 
an interlude of bricks and mortar before achiev- 
ing the seashore. 

Well, we are not far from Battery Park, 
whence we started. It is only a swallow's flight 
this — for I could have dwelt on the special 

36 



THE LUNGS 

characteristics of each park, on the elevated 
playgrounds at Williamsburg Bridge, on the va- 
rious recreation piers — but celerity was my aim, 
the impression as we skimmed; all the rest is 
guide-book literature — as Paul Verlaine did not 
say. I didn't start out to prove anything, yet 
I think I have suggested that, despite its con- 
tracted chest and waist, the lungs of Manhattan 
are both vigorous and varied. 



37 



Ill 

THE WATERWAYS 

Like the prudent elderly person I am, I ar- 
rived at the boat only a half-hour ahead of time. 
''Better never than early," I remarked — with a 
certain waggish air — to the ticket-seller, a man 
of informal manners, who dispensed with a 
booth and disposed of pasteboards in the open. 
This lent to the transaction an al fresco char- 
acter that also smacked of adventure. What 
an adventure ! 

I never mounted the gang-plank of an ocean- 
going steamer with the same trepidation that I 
crossed the deck of the little yacht on a sum- 
mer afternoon at the Battery. For one thing I 
was never, even during a mid-ocean storm, on 
such a wabbly boat. Every wash from passing 
craft made it shake Hke a bowlful of jelly. A 
sensitive nautical organism. But I was not 
afraid. It was just two o'clock, and two people 
were on board. Fifteen minutes later there were 
eleven first-class passengers, and at three o'clock 
we received our full complement and lifted an- 
chor for a long and perilous cruise up the East 
River, through the Harlem, down the Hudson, 
better known hereabout as the North River, and 
then into snug harbour at the Battery. 

38 



THE WATERWAYS 

Verily, thrilling prospects and hairbreadth 
'scapes were ahead of us. I looked at the 
captain and crew; both seemed seaworthy. I 
noted the megaphone of the ''lecturer," noted 
the position of the life-preservers, lighted a 
fresh cigar, and settled down in my uncomfor- 
table seat to stare and stare and stare. 

That fatally fascinating sky-line of lower 
Manhattan again set me to wondering whether 
it will ever assume the attribute of stability. 
The changeless change of New York is dis- 
couraging. The eternal characteristics of Lon- 
don or Boston, Vienna or Philadelphia find no 
counterpart in Gotham. It is but a few years 
ago and the Singer Building dominated the view 
from the Narrows ; on the Jersey shore, with the 
City Investing Building it assumed the shape 
of some fantastic beast, all neck and head. 

Now the denticulated battlements of the city 
cower beneath the terrifying height of the Wool- 
worth Tower. The Municipal Building bulks 
largely, and already the new Equitable Build- 
ing threatens to usurp the interest. The eye 
is caressed by the graceful lines of the Bankers 
Trust and that Titanic lighthouse on the Sea- 
mans' Institute at South Street and Coenties 
Slip serves as an admirable angle for the gaze 
to rest upon before it embraces the wide stretch 
of harbour. 

For hours I could sit and compose and re- 
compose — as the painters say — this extraor- 
dinary jumble of architectural styles. In the 

39 



THE WATERWAYS 

terrific chorus of steel and stone and glass 
every imaginable tune is chanted, from crazy 
Renaissance to sombre, savage Gothic, from 
perverted campaniles to drunken Baroque. The 
architecture of New York! It is a mad med- 
ley of pepper-boxes perched on cigar boxes set 
on end and pierced by sinister windows. In 
twilit tunnels beautiful churches are lost like 
stone needles in metallic haystacks. Consider 
Trinity Church ! 

Vain ornamentation that recalls sugar-coated 
cakes made for festive occasions finish off the 
spires of bizarre structures which might illus- 
trate an Arabian Nights tale. The top of the 
Woolworth Tower — is that beautiful or trivial ? 
The peak of the Metropolitan Tower — is that 
dignified or confectionery? And what of the 
Municipal Building roof, where curious turrets 
rob the tower of its meaning? There are no 
gargoyles in our architecture; the entire struc- 
ture is usually a gargoyle. But imposing! 

Just then the voice through the megaphone 
announced that Governor's Island was near by, 
and that the East River passage was about to 
be achieved. Every one chewed gum, but lis- 
tened respectfully. The Barge Office faded into 
the middle distance, and a slight nostalgia over- 
took me. Here we call it homesickness. Any- 
how, it wasn't seasickness, for, while the boat 
did rock in the wake of ferries and colliers, I 
experienced little discomfort. Possibly experi- 
ence on the real ocean may have saved me, for, 

40 



THE WATERWAYS 

joking aside, our two rivers can kick up a bob- 
bery when wind and tide are ill-tempered. Our 
mentor, who had the assured bearing of an actor 
doubled by a diplomat, was a little given to 
harping on the statuary of the Custom House. 
We were under the Brooklyn Bridge before he 
rather reluctantly let go the subject. 

Hurrah ! I recognise my old acquaintance 
Corlears Park, and the battered steamboat in 
the offing. Around the Hook is Grand Street 
Ferry, and its street vista. Under Manhattan 
Bridge, under Williamsburg Bridge, we passed, 
the navy yard to the right, with several war 
vessels to be seen. 

In summer-time the city might be described 
as an island i surrounded by bathing boys. I 
never befCre knew how many contraband plunges 
were enjoyed^y these young rascals. They 
shrieked at the yacht, and all the passengers 
immediately became immersed in their maps. 

Greenpoint with Newtown Creek did not 
arouse enthusiasm. It looks just as it smells 
— unpleasant. As we neared Blackwell's Is- 
land and the bridge, our lecturer discoursed on 
the punishment meted out to wrong-doers, and 
did not fail to make facetious remarks. The 
Island looks as neat as a new pin, a very agree- 
able abode for a summer vacation. As usual, 
in America all the good things are gobbled up 
for the wicked. There are Ward's, Randall's, 
and Blackwell's Islands wasted on the sick and 
criminal. Why ? 

41 



THE WATERWAYS 

Up the Seine the delightful He de Puteaux is 
given over to excursionists, as is our Glen Is- 
land. Why must minor malefactors, insane, 
and diseased humans be awarded the very pick 
of locations in a fine river so near New York? 
Couldn't they be handled just as well over in 
the wilds of Long Island, where they wouldn't 
damage the arid soil or hurt the monotonous 
landscape? Some day law-abiding people may 
come into their own, may enjoy our river fronts, 
(of wretched wharfs) unequalled anywhere for 
their views and size. 

Opposite, on the city shore, we passed the 
East River and Jefferson Parks. Both were 
thronged, for, no matter how hot the day, some 
breeze circulates at the river. Ward's Island re- 
minded me of St. Petersburg, in the River Neva, 
where is the charming island called Kamenoi 
Ostrow. Anton Rubinstein liked it so well that 
he composed one of his most popular and melo- 
dious pianoforte pieces, giving it the above title. 
But there are no champagne and pretty girls 
on Ward's; no gipsy orchestras tear passion to 
tatters as dark-haired beauties kick over the 
windmill on Kamenoi Island. The Russians 
know how to enjoy life, and their charity pa- 
tients and prisoners are never on view — indeed, 
are sometimes ominously absent from the map 
of life. 

Our guide pointed out the Old Ladies' Home 
and quoted Meet Me at the Church. No one 
smiled, for of all the solemn functions I ever 

42 



THE WATERWAYS 

participated in this sightseeing trip was the most 
solemn. The people were visitors from all parts 
of the State and country. (I overheard invid- 
ious criticism made by a man from Los An- 
geles.) The faculty of attention was in evi- 
dence. No laughter, no skylarking, among the 
young people; all was seriousness that must 
have gratified the man with the megaphone. 
They bought his book and post-cards, did those 
excursionists, and they bought often, for at 
every twist of the river he had a fresh batch 
to offer. The resources, oratorical and com- 
mercial, of that man were astonishing. I 
watched his face more than I did the scenery. 
He was a comedian born, and with a less sedate 
audience he would have made a hit. Toward 
eve a resigned look stole over his expressive 
features, but no complaint escaped his lips. He 
was one of art's martyrs. 

The stunted youth with the flat nose, curly 
hair, and flow of humour was more of a favour- 
ite. He sold opera-glasses, lemonade, tea, and 
information generally. He assured one timid 
old lady that with his binoculars she could see 
the Vaterland coming up the bay (the big boat 
arrived twenty- four hours later). She hired a 
pair and looked longingly at the iron steamboats 
en route to Coney Island. I admired that boy. 
He would have cracked a joke in the heart 
of a whirlwind, such liis resiliency of tempera- 
ment. 

The yacht no longer rocked. We had reached 

43 



THE WATERWAYS 

the Harlem River, and somnolency reigned 
aboard. We suffered from a surfeit. This in- 
difference was difficult to arouse. The Harlem 
water looked crowded after the East River. 
The bridges piqued us: Willis Avenue, Second 
Avenue, Third Avenue, New York Central, 
Lenox Avenue, Central, Putnam, High, Wash- 
ington, Kings, and the Spuyten Duyvil Bridges 
— an array which excites your interest because 
of the diversity. And also that huge raihoad 
bridge across to Long Island, and of the tubes 
anchored in the stream that are to serve for a 
subway under the river. Harlem is no longer a 
suburb. Harlem is the city. The Speedway is 
superb but solitary. A few Italians mending 
the road, that's all. 

Why does New York empty itself as soon as 
the sun rides high in the heavens ? In London the 
real season is in progress when the bad weather 
begins. New York is seasonally the superior 
of the English metropolis, notwithstanding its 
occasional torrid heat and humidity. Yet none 
but visitors fill our motors, sail our waters, or 
walk our pavements. The resident has slipped 
away to Newport, or is ambuscaded behind 
the blinds of his house, ashamed to be seen 
during the dog-days. Well, he misses a lot. 
While I don't altogether subscribe to the as- 
sertion that our town is the coolest summer 
resort in the land, nevertheless it is preferable 
to any other large city that I know of; besides, 
and this must not be overlooked, time need 

44 



THE WATERWAYS 

never hang heavy on your hands; there is so 
much to be seen that dull care is soon driven 
away. Think of the dancers ! 

As we advanced through the canal — we had 
duly admired the Jumel mansion, with the ad- 
jacent pretty Roger Morris Park — the scenes 
on either bank were mildly entertaining and 
human — all too human, as Nietzsche puts it — 
gangs of labourers, bathing youths, large, ag- 
gressive boys, rude boys, and coloured; shanties 
wherein candy and tobacco were sold; canal- 
boats with the family wash on view, mansions 
high in air set amid cool arbours, racing crews 
in frail shells, defiant lads hurling stones — and 
all the meanness and misery of dirty shore 
fronts encumbered with offal, garbage, barges 
standing by, and the inevitable baseball game, 
with its accompaniment of shouts and swear 
words and whirling figures, could be seen. 

It was a relief to near the Hudson, to ghde 
through its backwaters and finally catch a 
glimpse of its capacious bosom. The sensation 
was akin to emerging from a long, sultry cor- 
ridor into the open sea. Every one awoke — • 
that is, began to take notice. Professor Mega- 
phone fairly trilled out his facts. No one cried, 
''Thalatta! Thalatta!'' After all, your New 
Yorker is an amphibious human. He is not 
afraid of the wet, Hke the majority of our citi- 
zens from across the briny. The salt and the 
savour of the sea are for him a prime necessity. 
He may not go to the beaches, he may live on 

45 



THE WATERWAYS 

Broadway as far down as Bowling Green, yet 
never go across to Battery Park; but set him 
in an inland town and he begins to growl. 
That saHne tang is lacking. He does not miss 
the clatter and crash of the city as much as 
the salty air, and when you remind him of this 
he is quite surprised. He has never analyzed 
his sensations. 

The stagnant waters and stuffy atmosphere 
of the river that makes New York an island are 
forgotten when the Hudson is reached. A dif- 
ferent humour prevails. We listen to the vener- 
able anecdote of Spuyten Duyvil and we crane 
our necks to see Island Park, up at the end of 
Washington Heights. The guide indicates the 
Magdalen Home, and makes a few quips about 
the naughty girls therein; this time prunes and 
persimmons are writ large on every Hp. I was 
relieved when a drizzle began. I lent my um- 
brella (did you see a large old party who didn't 
carry an umbrella on a clear day?) to a lady 
sitting next to me, and her husband held it; 
thus was a good action rewarded, for I nestled 
behind his wife and he kept the rain from her. 
Nothing succeeds like selfishness. 

However, it was not a landscape-blurring rain. 
We easily saw the historic sites and experienced 
a slight hunger and thirst when the French 
restaurant on the Palisades side hove into view. 
The megaphone had reached the premium-with- 
every-pack-of-post-cards stage. He actually of- 
fered free pictures of the great liners. And the 

46 



THE WATERWAYS 

rain swept us fore and aft. The stanch little 
craft dipped her short nose in the foaming bil- 
lows, the pilot wiped the salt from his eyes, and 
one of the crew appeared in ''slops" and a sou'- 
wester. Then I knew the captain feared the 
weather. What he told me later was the truth 
— he hated the white, thick fog which threat- 
ened farther down. 

But the voice of the megaphone never faltered. 
''Ahoy and Avast! This is the last chance to 
buy at reduced rates views of the noble ocean 
liners — the Lusitania, Mauretania, Aquitania, 
Vaterland." Few bought, for what with the 
rough tide and the impending fog and the misty 
wind, the passengers were too preoccupied. But 
the hawker did not miss his chance: "Now, 
then, the finest remedy for seasickness in the 
world. A gift in every package." It was chew- 
ing-gum. 

Claremont was almost passed without com- 
ment; luckily, the lecturer caught it with the 
tail of his eye and we were told in moving ac- 
cents of the tomb of the amiable child. It was 
touching, say what you will; this melange of 
premature death, chewing-gum, the odour of 
wet mantles, the persuasive eloquence of the 
speaker, the giggling under my umbrella — my 
umbrella, remember ! — of the married couple 
(honeymooners, I'll wager) who were so incon- 
siderate as to withdraw from my side to their 
selfish selves and leave me in the zone of wet. 
No wonder I felt like crying. I thought I did 

47 



THE WATERWAYS 

for a moment, but it was only the rain. No 
lighthouse was in sight. The storm howled. 
We ''peeked" at the cork buoys. The thrill 
and thrall of shipwreck on a desert canal-boat 
gripped our fancy. 

We swept by that most inexpressive of na- 
tional monuments, Grant's Tomb, and when we 
arrived before the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monu- 
ment, our cicerone spoke of the objection raised 
by the neighbourhood when the view was ob- 
structed. I confess I sympathised with the dis- 
sidents. People, unless they are madly patriotic, 
don't build mansions to face monuments, and 
trippers. Everything in its place. As Ana- 
charsis Cloots exclaimed several times during 
the French Revolution: ''I belong to the party 
of indignation!" 

When we neared the city we heard about a 
famous divorce case that had stirred Riverside 
Drive. Really, I never enjoyed such a blend- 
ing of the instructive with picturesque contem- 
poraneous scandal. The lights were showing 
from Pahsades Park, and along the Drive innu- 
merable windows were starry. The palace of 
Charles M. Schwab once attained, we knew the 
end approached; with Seventy-second Street 
Riverside Drive finishes. The cars and tracks 
that are occasionally concealed on the upper part 
of the river are here displayed in all their ugli- 
ness. Another cause for complaint, and a grave 
one. Others have made it. I shan't. Our big 
town is eminently commercial; the aesthetic 

48 



THE WATERWAYS 

question is an academic one. If ever New York 
becomes the City Beautiful, it will be through 
the operation of causes as yet in the womb of 
time. Utility first. 

And is there a more inviting combination of 
sea and land anywhere ? Not even Rio Janeiro. 
The Hudson and the Palisades are as romantic 
as the Rhine; romantic, but not as sentimental. 
Manhattan Island, thanks to its facility for 
egress and ingress, can lodge its millions in New 
Jersey, or over on Long Island — not to men- 
tion Staten Island, or up the State. Hasn't the 
time arrived when the looks of things are as 
important as the price of things, or even the 
things themselves? (This is not meant to be 
metaphysical. I don't mean Kant's Ding an 
Sich.) When all the piers are steel or stone, 
when, instead of huddled sheds and dirty wooden 
docks, the eye will gratefully envisage wide 
spaces and warehouses, when the shore railroad 
will have been abolished, when cabbages are 
kings (they are now; also trumps) and roasted 
partridges fall from the firmament, oh ! what 
a nice, nice city New York will be ! Spotless 
Town and Phoebe Snow will be consumed with 
envy, and you and I will be translated to an- 
other and, let us hope, a better world. Selah ! 

The rain had ceased. We were dodging be- 
tween hooting tugs and lighters. Ferry-boats 
almost rammed our tender sides, a shaft of sun- 
shine, hot and cross, pierced the clouds. The 
fog vanished. There was the noise of whistles. 

49 



THE WATERWAYS 

Then we saw the West Street Building, then the 
Whitehall; soon we rounded the point. The 
Aquarium was again in the foreground. It was 
not yet dusk, but we felt the approach of night. 
The boarders — I mean the passengers — no 
doubt heard the horns of elfland (or supper) 
blowing through their memory. And films for 
the gods made by the eternal scene-shifter were 
preparing for performance down the harbour. 
A rosy Hght broke over Bayonne, the silhou- 
ettes of those twin tall chimneys were like un- 
sharpened lead pencils, and a summer sunset, 
rich, golden, glowing, bathed ''mast-hemmed 
Mannahata." (Alas, Walt Whitman ! it is now 
nearly funnel-encircled.) We had seen the rim 
of the island, and, even if superficially, the day 
had proved pleasant. I could repeat the experi- 
ment to-morrow with the same joy. 



50 



IV 

THE MATRIX 



During the cool, rainy streak of weather last 
July I was in the mood statistical. I heartily 
disKke figures, which are the most elastic and 
plastic quantity when manipulated by clever 
folk, and the most depressing of all combina- 
tions is the dubious ''science" of statistics, even 
more than that ''dismal science," socialism. 

Nevertheless, I was "vastly intrigued," by 
the statement that the Subway as it now stands 
has a total length of twenty-one miles. Fabu- 
lous ! And the enterprise is only in its infancy ; 
the entire island will be honeycombed by swiftly 
running trains, and there is hope that the ugly 
"L" roads will be removed and certain broad 
avenues regain their inalienable but lapsed priv- 
ileges of light and air — not to mention the ces- 
sation of intolerable noise. 

If you hear an "L" train starting or stopping 
— especially in Brooklyn, where the flat wheel 
is a cult with the B. R. T. — you are reminded 
of a busy boiler-shop when a lot of orders have 
come in for Dreadnoughts. The "L" roads are 
a standing reproach to Greater New York. 

51 



THE MATRIX 

It may sound childish, but it is the truth, I 
confess that I feared to travel in the Subway till 
a short time ago. I was in Paris some years 
ago when a catastrophe, a fire, occurred, and 
the horrors of that accident made me nervous. 
The Underground in London is gloomy, the cars 
not inviting — rather dirty, I should say — but 
the idea of fire never haunts one en route. The 
masonry is solid, and the dampness would 
smother any conflagration. The Paris Metro- 
pohtan is much more cheerful and better lighted. 
The service, too, is excellent. 

BerHn has only begun experimenting with 
subways. There is virtually but one. It seems 
miniature compared to the London or New 
York subways. The cars are small and Kght- 
running. The system is adapted to the shape 
of the city. You can go from the neighbour- 
hood of the Palace — it is only a few blocks 
away — to Charlottenburg, with several loops 
for other districts. The speed is not breakneck, 
there are no expresses, and every car has a com- 
partment for smokers — from which an over- 
powering odour of bad tobacco is always present. 
Our network is colossal in comparison. 

The first day I cautiously went down the 
steps of the Grand Central Station it would not 
have been a difficult task to send me flying up- 
stairs again. I wasn't exactly frightened, rather 
nervous. The hustling crowd on the platform 
didn't give me much chance for reflection, and 
I entered the first train that I was shoved into 

52 



THE MATRIX 

— the magnetism of the mob, as Le Bon would 
say. I found myself skimming down-town and 
on a local. It went fast enough for me then; 
now I avoid locals as much as possible. Who 
doesn't? Every station stopped at robs us of 
our precious minutes, although when we arrive 
at our destination we are apt to waste time 
staring at a steeplejack, a street altercation, or 
the baseball returns. 

Many years ago I learned to discount the 
hurry and flurry of New York. We are no 
busier than Bridgeport or Jersey City, but we 
pretend we are. It is necessary for our munic- 
ipal vanity to squeeze and jam and rush and 
crush. Another vital lie. The conformation 
of the island has conditioned the transportation 
problem (Ha ! I told you I had been reading 
the jargon of statistics), hence the ^'L" roads 
and the Subway. The more the merrier, say 
I. Anything that will relieve us of the shame- 
ful huddling of humanity during the busy hours, 
those hours that are a purgatory to decent men 
and women. May their necessity vanish with 
the passing of the "L" roads. 

But I am not sticking to my story. To be 
truthful, there isn't much to tell. For a few 
minutes I was stunned by the roar, discon- 
certed by the gale that blew backward through 
the train, and held on to a strap as a sailor 
hangs on to the main brace in a storm at sea. 
(I hope it's the main brace.) The roominess of 
the car, the brilliancy of the lighting, and the 

53 



THE MATRIX 

absorbed expression of the passengers grew upon 
my consciousness. Though, so it seemed to me, 
we were racing with death, no one suggested 
that such an idea worried his skull. A Subway 
crowd is typical of the town. Indifference is 
one prime quality and chewing gum another. 
Nearly every one chews, the men more volubly 
— if I may so express myself — than the women. 

The Ian tern- jawed Yankee type is again to 
the fore. For a generation he had disappeared 
from our streets, from our illustrations. He is 
back, shrewd-faced, long upper lip, and salient 
cheek-bones. But he is the surviving remnant of 
the once dominant American nation — then a 
compound of Irish, EngHsh, Scotch, with an 
occasional modicum of German; to-day he is 
on his last legs, fighting, though he hardly real- 
izes it, against the mastery of the Slav and the 
ItaKan. But who cares? We are as yet too 
young a nation, still in too inchoate a state, to 
worry about the infusion of more foreign blood. 
If it is healthy, it is welcome. From the giant 
amalgam something powerful must emerge even 
if a sense of continuity is still lacking. But in 
no American city is the cosmopolitan orchestra- 
tion so rich, so reverberant and complex. 

But the national neurosis of gum chewing is 
not a promising sign. Are we so nervous, so 
lacking in self-control, as this St. Vitus's dance 
of the jaws indicates ? To watch human beings 
feed is never an inspiring spectacle; but this arti- 
ficial, self -induced labial pleasure — why should 

54 



THE MATRIX 

it be intruded upon the eye of a neighbour? 
Animals chew their cud ; mankind should not. 
iEsthetically it disfigures the profiles of pretty 
girls. If they were only conscious of this! I 
have seen lovers fondly gazing in each other's 
eyes, and chewing all the while. Even the police 
chew. When the Woman Suffrage Party makes 
a crusade against this minor sin of ill taste I'll 
have some hope in its utifity; this and our 
vulgar ways of speech, enunciation, and pro- 
nunciation are greater evils in the long run 
than tobacco, alcohol, and racing. They debase 
the social currency of life, and where there are 
bad manners, bad morals are not far away. 

The correction of these matters is primarily 
the affair of the women. I really believe that 
English is spoken nowhere so badly — always 
excepting Cockney London — as in New York 
City. Our public schools are the principal poi- 
soners. Ride often in the Subway (on the *'L'' 
roads foreigners predominate) and you will hear 
our noble tongue abominably abused. It's not 
the general slanginess, for slang has its uses, 
but the disfiguring twang, the nasal intonation, 
and the mispronunciation that offend the ear. 
I had always fancied that only in Brooklyn you 
heard *'Brooklynese," that unpleasant flatten- 
ing of the vowels, that depressing drawl. But 
I did Brooklyn an injustice; to-day all New 
York speaks in the same fashion. Not many 
young men and women you meet are born here, 
and their provincial accent has clung to them. 

55 



THE MATRIX 

I know the usual philistine will bob up after 
reading this, crying aloud in righteous wrath: 
Better our dear old American language with our 
pure hearts than all the fancy speech of Eng- 
lishmen ! But your hearts are no purer, my 
misguided but patriotic person, than any other 
nation's, and the most disagreeable English I 
ever heard was from the lips of English country 
people. Really, you can't understand some of 
their dialects. I am complaining that, with 
our common-school education, the best in the 
world, the chiefest thing, our language, is so 
badly spoken, the art of speech, plain and with- 
out frills, the speech that differentiates man- 
kind from the beast world. Chewing gum is a 
vile habit; at least it keeps silent the raucous 
New York voice; above all, the voice of the New 
York woman. Riding in the noisy Subways 
and gabbhng doesn't improve the timbre of the 
ladies' tone. 

However, we are not given to such niceties 
in the whirl of our daily life. We lack the 
*' faculty of attention," and we lack Sitzfleisch; 
we can't sit still without twiddling our thumbs, 
twitching our limbs, or working our jaws. We 
are without repose, and, much as we may dis- 
Hke the idea of mihtary service, it turns out 
well-behaved young men, not a mob of jumping- 
jacks. Our indifference to the finer shades is 
the result of our selfishness. It is not a ques- 
tion of men treating women impolitely — though 
it is exceptional — but of man's impoliteness to 

S6 



THE MATRIX 

man. Perhaps more subways will modify the 
evil. By that time we shall have lost all our 
manners. 

I know it is the stereotyped thing to say that 
New York crowds are good-natured. Good- 
natured is hardly the word — timid, cringing, 
cowardly are better words. An English or a 
German or a French crowd wouldn't endure 
for a minute the slights put upon our crowds 
by impertinent petty officials. In no country 
are personal rights less respected. I know the 
Subway guards are much-suffering, and that as 
a body they are superior to the ''L" road guards, 
who are dirty as to attire and discourteous to a 
degree. They tell me that the companies pay 
starvation wages, but why should the pubHc 
suffer? I'll tell you why — a whisper, mind 
you ! — in Greater New York the public is a 
flock of stupid sheep. 

II 

Pretty girls in our city ! Lots of them. In 
the Subway at morn and eve you can count the 
plain ones. These girls are of many nation- 
alities. They all dress above their station, wear 
clothes that are manifestly cheap, in imitation 
of prevailing fashionable modes. When they 
cease imitating there is no more hope of social 
ambition and social ascension. We have no 
peasant class in America. No self-respecting 
woman will dress according to her "class" — 
or her means, either — for she is ever hopeful 

57 



THE MATRIX 

that her "class" will be a better one, or that 
her daughters will marry "above" them. This 
social hopefulness is nation-wide. It is our 
Bovaryism, our vital He. The ragpicker's grand- 
daughter marries a duke; the son of a peddler 
becomes a magnate in the financial world. No 
other land affords such opportunities in mounting 
the ladder of life ; otherwise the million that an- 
nually invade our shore would not be in evidence. 
When immigration ceases it will mean that the 
rats are leaving the sinking ship of state. But 
I can't help wishing the foreign invasion would 
go elsewhere. New York is full to the brim. 
A few more plagues of locusts and the entire 
land will be as bare as a bone. 

Yes, pretty girls, a bit too rouged, too flimsily 
attired, but clean and self-respecting. The old- 
time chlorotic American type is vanishing; 
thanks to open-air exercise and increased physi- 
cal and mental activities, our girls, native or 
imported, are very vital. Foreigners, accus- 
tomed to a more placid and conventional type 
at home, find them irresistible, chewing-gum 
and twang included. I find that the brunette, 
the brown as well as black, is in the ascendant. 
But there are blondes enough, and the blonde 
is for the public the high-water mark of beauty. 
The stage and the vaudeville prove this. Bigger 
frames are to be seen than a decade ago; the 
foreign-born women, however, are mostly under- 
sized. On the avenues the shopping women are 
alike; whether in Brooklyn or the Bronx, the 

58 



THE MATRIX 

huntress stalks her bargain game like her sister. 
In the theatre or at home she is more human. 
They say that only women buy and read 
books, fill the opera-house and the theatre — also 
the film shows. But does that account for the 
present condition of American culture? Is the 
inside of her pretty head not as distinguished 
as her gowns ? Perish the thought ! Let some 
man more courageous than I answer that ques- 
tion. Max Nordau did, but then the little Doc- 
tor never lived in New York. 

Emerson says that ''steam is almost English." 
Then electricity must be American. That po- 
tentate who, fearing the thunderbolt, built him- 
self a palace underground, and there was slain 
by the hghtning he had tried to evade, would 
be distrusted if to-day he could revisit the 
glimpses of the moon. In the bowels of New 
York he might find immunity from the light- 
ning stroke, but he would find there lightning, 
though harnessed. What would the Subway 
be without the electric "juice"? It wouldn't 
be at all, for we could never have endured so 
patiently the choking atmosphere of the Under- 
ground before Theodore Dreiser's hero, the 
Titan, gave London electricity instead of steam 
and smoke. 

I am old enough and sentimental enough to 
miss the locomotive, which man built as an 
image of himself — puffing, hissing, shrill, and 
stubborn, and fast-running. A locomotive is 
very human, not specifically English, as Emer- 

59 



THE MATRIX 

son said. It breathes, it is alive, whereas the 
electric motor, while more subtle, is also more 
treacherous. Less noisy, it is less sociable and 
never greedily consumes coal lumps as does 
the hungry locomotive. Ruskin loathed steam. 
Would he have loved electricity? I doubt it. 
Overhead the electric motor is as noisy as a 
launch without a muffler. Even in the air man 
must chatter. 

One day I conceived the bold notion of going 
under the North River by the tubes. I had 
made the trip to Brooklyn via the tunnel and 
lived to tell the tale. But New Jersey was a 
different matter. It was practically foreign 
soil and farther away. I went from Cortlandt 
Street, and was disappointed when I got to Jer- 
sey City so soon. That spot, like Long Island 
City, is not to be tarried in. Oblivious of the 
fact that I could have taken the elevator to the 
street surface, I toiled up a twisting staircase, 
as fine a place for sandbagging, garotting, and 
highway robbery as I ever saw outside of an 
engraving by the fantastic Piranesi. The day 
was a rainy one. The lights were dim, the steps 
many. I was both grateful and disheartened 
when I reached the open. Why Jersey City? 
'' Vous I'avez voulu, George Dandin," as the say- 
ing is in the old Moliere comedy. I had disem- 
barked at Jersey City when I wanted to go to 
Hoboken. The matter was soon readjusted. 
I asked the advice of the elevator man and he 
pointed out a ferry-house. But I didn't care 

60 



THE MATRIX 

to return to my native land. Then he sug- 
gested, go down-stairs and take the train to 
Hoboken. How simple it all sounded. I got 
into the right car — it goes no farther, I was told 
— and came up near the Hamburg- American 
docks; farther up fluttered the flag of the 
North German Lloyd, and the surroundings 
looked pleasantly familiar. 

By some psychic process of reasoning, which 
only Hugo Mlinsterberg could explain, the 
thought of Hoboken, the sight of ''Hapag,'^ 
made me aware of Meyer's and Naegeli's ho- 
tels on another street. Auto-suggestion ? Tour- 
ists who are unhappy enough to stay overnight 
in Hoboken during the mosquito season never 
miss Meyer's hospitable garden, where the cool 
brew flows. Not to stop there, if only for a 
drink, is to miss one of the delights of foreign 
travel. I wasn't dreaming of sailing to Europe, 
yet did I hurry over to Meyer's later and rested 
my fatigued organs. Also moistened them as 
I read Jugend and other publications. 

I returned by another tube; this time I came 
out at Fourteenth Street. The cars are the most 
spacious, clean, and comfortable of all the sub- 
ways. I paid five cents from the Terminal Build- 
ing to Jersey City, paid five cents to New York. 
But why did I have to pay an extra two cents 
at Fourteenth or Twenty -third or Thirty- third 
Street? Is this one more McAdoo about noth- 
ing? What joy to stamp one's native asphalt ! 
I celebrated by riding down to Herrvater Luchow 

6i 



THE MATRIX 

and bored him with the recital of my adventure. 
I noted, in the Hudson tunnels, that I did not 
suffer from the oppression I always experience 
crossing under the East River. In the Penn- 
sylvania tunnels the pressure at the temples is 
also severe. The air is closer than in the Sub- 
way tubes. - 

A mania for movement, a wanderlust seized 
me after the New Jersey trip. I went to the 
Bronx via the tunnel, I went to Two Hundred 
and Forty-second Street and Broadway. It is 
a pity that the Subway is not altogether an 
elevated road in those remote plarts. The views 
are wonderful. It was Ernest Lawson who dis- 
covered, artistically speaking, the Harlem River 
and the unknown reaches of the Bronx. His 
gorgeously rich palette comes happily into play, 
for there may be seen tender, pigeon-blue skies, 
splendid, thoughtful trees, capricious, tumbled 
rocks, and gleaming waterways. His best 
themes are found near the Harlem River. 

For the Bronx I have a weakness, especially 
the park and the Zoo. When I had ridden in 
every subway — also in the new Chambers 
Street to Myrtle Avenue and Ridgewood branch, 
which crosses the Williamsburg Bridge — I 
hunted up the Belmont tubes and the old Stein- 
way tunnel. Really, the poHce of New York 
are obHging men. At the Queensboro Bridge, 
Fifty-ninth Street, a sandy-haired officer broke 
the news to me as gently as if I had been a rela- 
tive. No, the Belmont tubes at East Forty- 

62 



THE MATRIX 

second Street were not yet visible, nor the Stein- 
way tunnel. I saw that he looked at me 
curiously. I must have seemed a greenhorn. 
''If you want to go to Long Island City/' he 
added, ''and I don't see why any one should want 
to go there" — he paused and I abetted his sly- 
dog humour with vacant laughter — "just cross 
the ferry." In thanking him I explained that 
my mistake had arisen because once in the de- 
parted old Grand Union Cafe I had jumped at a 
severe blast under the hotel. "Oh, that's noth- 
ing," said Simeon Ford to me; "that's the way 
they send passengers to Astoria." And I had 
believed him, in the innocence of my metro- 
politan heart. The sandy-haired one smiled. 
He knew Simeon. 

Then I took to the bridges and ferries. I 
went to Staten Island and wasn't sorry; crossed 
to Jersey by several routes and was. The old 
ferries at Wall, Grand, and Forty-second Streets 
at first proved picturesque, and soon palled. 
Brooklyn Bridge, after all, more beautiful than 
her three sisters (bridge is feminine, isn't it?), 
the most graceful suspension bridge in the world, 
is become too familiar. We cross it, and seldom 
afoot, thus missing that magnificent panorama 
of architecture, bay, islands, and distant Jersey 
shore. Besides, its Brooklyn side lacks the 
dignity and space of the Flatbush Avenue ap- 
proach to Manhattan Bridge. That, indeed, is 
most impressive. On Sunday mornings the 
Jewish market is one of the sights of the town. 

63 



THE MATRIX 

I like the Williamsburg Bridge, with its long 
perspective of Delancey Street, now giving us a 
European vista, and its big playground atop. 
The view is puzzling. You look for the two 
adjacent bridges and your glance collides with 
the sugar-refinery across the river, which at this 
part is all askew. You must twist your head to 
see the other bridges. Returning, you note the 
Queensboro Bridge, and decide to visit it. It is 
a strange structure and a cantalever; as it is, 
I feel safer on Brooklyn Bridge. The best part 
of the Queensboro is just over Blackwell's Island. 

There is material for observation that takes 
days to exhaust. The various bridges spanning 
the Harlem become more attractive the farther 
one goes westward. Several are excellent for 
suicidal purposes. They all look like Ernest 
Lawsons, so strangely does nature pattern after 
art. As for the possible bridges to cross the 
lordly Hudson, I hope never to see them. As 
a spectacle those waters need no bridging. Tun- 
nels are always more expeditious. Doubtless 
some day both rivers will make of Greater New 
York greatest New York, for they will be solidly 
bridged; anyhow, the East River. So mote it 
be! 

Ill 

New York, intimately seen in the summer, 
its family wash on the line, all its linen not spot- 
less — ah, the lure of the hanging gardens ! — make 
us forget Babylon, and its millions are as ghosts. 

64 



THE MATRIX 

I said something of the sort to the man with 
the megaphone — the dry-land Don Quixote 
who whispers information atop of one of the 
sightseeing coaches. His answer was charac- 
teristic: '*If I never saw Babylon again I 
shouldn't be sorry. What with hanging on a 
bumping coach, talking through my hat, and 
dodging banana peels and dead cats on Riving- 
ton Street, I yearn for the old farm at La Man- 
cha." He was playing up to me, for he knew 
I had compared him to the Knight of the Rue- 
ful Countenance. So the Don let me see that 
he was famihar with the topography of a Span- 
ish city. He also said Dulcinea and Rozinante 
with clear, firm articulation. Evidently a man 
of superior parts. Needless to add, that Sancho 
Panza was the chauffeur. 

But unless you only care to scratch the sur- 
face, those sightseeing tours are far from satis- 
factory, though excellent experience for a bud- 
ding novelist. Naturally Chinatown is only a 
sham and the much- vaunted Bowery a bore. 
On a warm afternoon the up-town ride along 
Riverside Drive — barring the ducking of tree 
branches — is agreeable; but going southward 
you are bumped on the abominable Broadway 
with its rude wooden roadway, and to see only 
the basements of high buildings is not exactly 
seeing them from afar. Besides, you are stared 
at, sometimes jeered. The offensive "Hay- 
seed!" is flung at you, and you really must be 
alert on some of the crowded East Side streets 

6s 



THE MATRIX 

to avoid rotten fruit meant for your head by 
some malicious youngster. 

I fancy the idea of the coach doesn't please 
many people in that district. It seems an im- 
pertinent intrusion, and then there is always 
the chance of an accident. The chauffeur is 
cautious, Don Quixote diplomatic. Neverthe- 
less I held my breath several times near Mul- 
berry Bend; children there are as plentiful as 
that fruit in season, and they are both careless 
and reckless. We were held up by a street-car 
(there is still one in operation) on a particularly 
narrow street. A well-dressed man, an artisan 
or a barber, cursed us: ^' You rich think you can 
come down here and kill our children ! " he 
cried in excellent English, shaking his fist all 
the while. His hands, I noted, were clean. 

Don Quixote shook his head mournfully. 
''Rich?" he muttered. ''Rich?" we echoed. 
There wasn't a man in the excursion who didn't 
carry a cheap silver watch. We were glad to 
start. That accusation was too much for our 
bank-accounts. We blushed at the very im- 
putation of wealth. 

I'm sure I shall be accused of inconsistency 
when I say I'm not shamed by the East Side. I 
know that the poverty there is appalling, that 
people are packed as in a pickle jar, that crime 
and disease stalk in company with hunger and 
dirt, yet these horrible conditions are not on view 
for the casual spectator. I never had the cour- 
age to explore one of the old-fashioned crowded 

66 



THE MATRIX 

tenement-houses. If he has been in London he 
knows that the East End is the last word in 
revolting conditions. Or Paris, or the BerHn 
North Side, or the Ghetto in Vienna. Over 
some of these places is written: "All hope aban- 
don ye who enter here!" None of these spots 
is as cheerful, as clean, or as prosperous as the 
East Side of New York. It is more crowded 
than it was ten years ago, and more attractive. 
Take Riving ton, or Hester, or Essex,'or any street 
in the network of that congested district, and 
while you make slow progress through the mob 
of children, women, peddlers' carts, vegetable 
and fish shops, men and babies, this crowd 
doesn't seem in the last gasp of poverty. It is 
noisy, dirty, chattering, chaffering, and good- 
tempered. It is the air of New York, that 
electric ozone which makes for optimism. 

Where there is so much smoke there is sure 
to be fire; and the fire is the money spent on 
food and fruit and at the "movies." The smell 
of fish is never absent. As for the types, they 
are marked. The old division of Little Italy, 
New Jerusalem, Bohemia, Germany, Servia, 
Greece, and other nationalities no longer holds. 
The Jews are everywhere; so are the Italians 
and Czechs. Some predominate in certain 
quarters; for example, you will find many Bo- 
hemians along First Avenue, Avenue A, and 
Avenue B above Fifty-ninth Street; Itahans 
still congregate about the Bend, and there are 
many Poles hard by Tompkins Square. 

67 



THE MATRIX 

If I had a friend who was desirous of seeing 
certain parts of southeastern European cities — 
of Lemberg, where cluster Galician Jews; of 
Vienna, Prague, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Cra- 
cow, even of BerHn and Naples — I would invite 
him for a week's cruise on our East Side. There 
is no necessity of going across the water to hear 
foreign tongues, see odd costumes or study 
strange physiognomies. They are all on view 
day and night in New York, the only New Cos- 
mopolis on the globe. Every nation is repre- 
sented; each has its cafe, its newspaper, its 
church, its theatre. Optimism rules the roast. 
The '^unwritten law" over there is: Crescite et 
multiplicamini ! Maternity hospitals are every- 
where, so are baby carriages. This huge ant- 
hill is the matrix of New York, its nursery, its 
refutation of race suicide. 

If you cross Canal Street eastward from 
Third Avenue you will emerge in Rutgers Square 
and East Broadway. The entire district might 
be called a show-place, not as an evil example, 
but as a normal East Side neighbourhood. With 
a schoolhouse, a public library, a park, and a 
big newspaper office, this square is typically 
civilised. Free from dirt, full of busy, bustling 
humanity and contented, romping children, for 
me it is representative of present conditions in 
the Hfe of the New York poor. Not that these 
people consider themselves the poorest — they 
do not; but they are not rich, though some are 
fairly well to do. 

68 



THE MATRIX 

At MaiseFs bookstore on East Grand Street 
you will find the best literature of the world; 
indeed, more good literature than you can find 
at similar establishments farther west. The 
East Side is an omnivorous reader. Stupendous 
is the amount of books studied and digested; 
books of solid worth, not ^'best sellers" or other 
flimflam alleged ''literature." As a nation we 
are becoming as superficial in our reading as 
we are in our taste for the theatre. Our native 
theatre has nearly touched low- water mark, and 
the film theatre — that twin brother to dime 
novels — is only a degree lower; stupidity and 
vulgarity in two instead of three dimensions. 

You would smile if I told you that there is not 
much drinking in this quarter; they are not 
addicted to alcohol and they do love sweetmeats. 
I can count the places on the East Side where 
good Pilsner is on tap. The Russians, Poles, 
Ruthenians, Greeks, and Servians are not beer 
drinkers, though the Bohemians are. As a mat- 
ter of record there is less drunkenness in New 
York than in, say, Glasgow — that is in propor- 
tion to their respective populations. London 
is infinitely more intemperate. 

I went through Broome Street and saw its 
solitary tree — it is there yet, near Attorney 
Street, or some such street. I thought of the 
Ancient Mariner when I saw that tree, lonely 
but tough-minded, as WilHam James would have 
said. 

Two decades ago Mr. HoweUs wrote that if 

69 



THE MATRIX 

any American novelist struck a note as pro- 
foundly tragic as Dostoievsky it would be false 
to our social conditions. But since then the 
temperament of the country has changed, owing 
to immigration. There is tragic chaos and the 
hurly-burly of the deracinated about us. 

It would demand the resources of a Dos- 
toievsky to paint our East Side in all its exotic, 
variegated, and bewildering colours. No genius 
of less calibre than that of Fyodor Mihailo- 
vitch's could essay the giant task. Where is 
he? Here is the raw, rich material for the 
great American novel. But where is the novel- 
ist? Let me suggest that only an American of 
Celtic brilliancy, Teutonic profundity, EngKsh 
intellectuahty, French art, and the idealism of 
the Slavic Hebrew could compass the theme. 

In Europe there is room for race prejudice, 
but not in America. Here it is self-stultifying, 
self-contradicting, and utterly abhorrent to 
democratic principles. We freed the black race, 
we must free ourselves of all race prejudice. 
We need the Jewish blood as spiritual leaven; 
the race is art-loving and will prove a barrier 
to the rapidly growing wave of fanatical puri- 
tanism. Nevertheless, at the expense of seem- 
ing inconsistent, let me suggest that one of the 
burdens of life would be lightened if our passen- 
ger transportation system were otherwise. The 
greedy and not too tidy bandits who run the 
wretched pubHc automobiles are only the ser- 
vants of their employers. But these miserably 

70 



THE MATRIX 

kept machines are too high-priced for the masses. 
In Subway and surface, on *'L" cars the people 
you meet are not always clean: some because 
of ingrained hatred of bathing; others, decent 
working men who can't help themselves. I've 
frequently seen them embarrassed when they 
crowded against well-dressed ladies. What do 
you expect for a nickel? But if they did as 
they so sensibly do in Europe — have two or 
three classes at a slight increase of fare — we 
could snap our fingers at the hired automobile 
tyrants. 

Theoretically, we all love our fellow man; but 
you like him better if he is clean, don't you ? I 
do. And now, don't imagine this suggestion 
is a covert attack on our immortal principle of 
equaHty. It is not. The motor-cars might be 
judged from the same standpoint. I can't 
afford a motor-car, but I could scrape together 
ten cents for a seat in a clean, sweet-smelHng car, 
where the filthiest sort of humans would not 
sprawl over me. One man is as good as an- 
other — poHtically; but if a man won't wash, 
that is the objection to his presence. But what 
Mayor, what Board of Aldermen wouldn't veto 
a bill to have separate cars ! Class against mass 
would be the slogan, when the only issue in ques- 
tion is soap versus dirt. 

I know I'm voicing the opinion of a civilised 
minority. But there, again, come into play the 
timid tactics of our local sheepfold. At first 
jeered, these separate cars would become a 

71 



THE MATRIX 

necessity, like the ten-cent stages on Fifth Ave- 
nue. Has anybody denounced as ''enemies of 
the people" these coaches? No, because the 
''people" ride in them and Uke them. Until 
New York follows London, Paris, and BerKn 
and maintains an efficient and cheap taxicab 
service we must clamour for the next best thing 
— ten-cent surface and Subway cars. They 
would soon pay. But I suppose the great god 
Graft must be appeased by the usual burnt- 
offerings and what we demand must be de- 
ferred to the Greek Kalends. Avos I 

New York has been called a calamity, a 
freight yard, a boiler-shop, an open trench, a 
mining gulch — with its manners and tastes; 
in reality it is the most aggressively noisy city 
on earth. Mostly unnecessary noise. It was 
Schopenhauer, annoyed by the whip-cracking 
of Frankfort carters, who denounced noise as 
a prime enemy of the intellect, denounced as 
lacking in finer sensibility a nation or city that 
endured noise. In our town he would have gone 
mad. And little relief in sight for us. 

As to the increasing horrors of ugly loft build- 
ing in the very centre of the residential section, 
that is a subject for sorrow to old New Yorkers. 
No law can keep off these pernicious flocks of 
locusts who ruin, aesthetically speaking, where- 
ever they alight. Entire Manhattan Island will 
in not so many years become a vulgar Tophet 
of industrialism. I doubt if even the present 
rush to Long Island by manufacturers will long 

72 



THE MATRIX 

avert the time when belching chimneys will be 
so closely built as to swap smoke, and the nar- 
row streets crowded with chaffering strangers. 
Ichahod ! 

But I'm tiring you with all this futile talk, and 
I'm tired myself of the East Side. When I left 
the book-shop I went over to the Vienna Cafe on 
Broadway, a sort of alimentary modulation 
from east to west, and as I crossed Second Ave- 
nue at Tenth Street I saw the coach with Don 
Quixote on the sidestep, the machine quietly 
resting, the passengers as solemn as owls. The 
megaphone man sardonically smiled at me as he 
dusted from his coat some yellow particles: 
*' The highly civilised East Side ! I got this dose 
of insect-powder on Essex Street." After all, 
it depends on the point of view, doesn't it? 
^'Back to La Mancha !" I called out. In reply 
he waved his long ironic hand. He looked more 
like Henry Irving than ever as the coach slowly 
went northward. *' Ladies and gentlemen this 
was once the famous Boulevard Cafe," I over- 
heard, as the rubberneck wagon faded from view 
up the avenue. 



73 



V 

THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 



The mighty maw of New York ! Even Zola 
might have handled the Brobdingnagian theme 
inadequately. The avalanche of food that is 
swallowed in twenty-four hours and the river 
of liquid that disappears down parched gullets 
on this island — decidedly, several Zolas would 
have their hands full in dealing with the story. 

Statisticians give you rows of figures, but to 
interpret the huge crude symbol is another 
matter. You remember how Zola treated in 
Le Ventre de Paris (The Stomach of Paris) his 
Cheese Symphony! Truly a Rabelaisian per- 
formance. 

But New York is double the size of the Paris 
of those days (1873), and instead of one na- 
tional cuisine it boasts half a hundred. I am 
at the outset trying to show the magnitude of 
the task, a task I decline to undertake. But I 
may succeed, after a fashion, in indicating the 
resources of a city wherein even Pantagruel 
could line his monstrous paunch and slake his 
magnificent thirst. 

74 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

With the possible exception of London, there 
is no place like New York for versatility in eat- 
ing and drinking. Nearly all cuisines are repre- 
sented. You can eat kosher or munch birds'- 
nests in the Chinese style; while French, Rus- 
sian, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Hun- 
garian, Polish, Austrian, Turkish, Syrian, Ru- 
manian, Greek, Portuguese, Cuban, Mexican, 
Liberian — why drag out the list ? — are to be 
found; everything from everywhere may be had 
in our city — • everything but fried oysters as they 
cook them in Philadelphia. And that important 
fact will be clearly set forth during the course of 
this solemn sermon on gluttony. 

It is only natural when a man's hair begins 
to thin and he has gout in the gums that he 
sadly turns to the ''pleasures" of memory, a 
bitter-sweet game, the shadow of a vanished 
substance (this is a Celtic bull, but it is what I 
mean), and one which always sets the teeth on 
edge. Just why the man of the "lonesome 
latter years" should recall the f eastings of his 
youth, I leave to psychologists. 

He may have written at least one sonnet or 
story, he may have painted a row of brilliant 
portraits or landscapes, yet set him down before 
a fire and straightway he falls to musing about 
the girls of yesteryear or that particular night 
when the wine-cup was not red, but champagne- 
coloured. Or FinelK's fried oysters. Or the 
terrapin of Augustin (both in Philadelphia). Or 
the salads and burgundies at Delmonico's. Or 

75 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

— and this happens, too — the taste of those 
oysters eaten fresh from the shell at a cart-tail 
coram publico, say, on Fulton Street three dec- 
ades ago. The miserable sinner should be 
thinking of his soul and lo ! his belly is still his 
god — that is not in reaHty, for he is a dyspeptic 
and almost toothless, and Uncle Uric a daily 
visitor, so it needs must be only memory images, 
and poor entertainment such recollections usually 
are. Mother Church, who has minutely cata- 
logued every nuance of transgression, calls such 
a perverse mental operation "morose delecta- 
tion." 

But it is not of such sour stuff that my dreams 
are made. Contrariwise, I recall with intense 
amusement the New York restaurants and cafes 
of a quarter of a century ago. Were they any 
better then than now? is the inevitable ques- 
tion. 

The answer is that we were younger then, our 
appetites and teeth unafraid; nevertheless, there 
are many changes and not all for the better. 
The young folk nowadays are not epicures. 
Wine palates they have not; cocktails and the 
common consumption of spirits have banished 
all sense of taste values. They are in too much 
of a hurry to dance or to ride, to sit long at 
table and dine with discrimination. 

The number of cheap, quick-fire food hells is 
appalling. One understands during the mid- 
day rush that a glass of milk and a sHce of pie 
suffice, but when the day's toil is over and the 

76 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

upper town achieved, then we expect leisure 
and elegance, taste in the evening menu. They 
are seldom to be found. Noisy bands of music- 
makers, ill-cooked food and hastily gobbled, 
shrieking instead of conversation, and then — 
dancing. This is the order of the evening. 
The theatre is rapidly disappearing, I mean the 
real theatre, and only in a few choice spots is 
the cult and ritual of dining observed and per- 
formed. 

However, these few do exist, and there you 
will find the remnant of a once-powerful con- 
gregation, members of the Church of the Holy 
Epicure. But they are doomed. Eating and 
drinking are rapidly entering the category of 
the lost fine arts. Bolting, guzzling, gum chew- 
ing, and film pictures have driven them away. 

Some day, say hopeful prophets, they will 
return. I doubt it. Our age is too material- 
istic. The noble ideals of the gourmets are 
forgotten, and, as Matthew Arnold would ask 
— in the eloquent phrases — slightly altered — 
of Maurice de Guerin: *'The jealous gods have 
buried somewhere proofs of the origins of all 
good things to eat, but upon the shores of what 
ocean have they rolled the stone that hides 
them, Macareus?" 

When I first drifted into town from Paris, 
about 1886, 1 was taken by the late Hugh Craig, a 
cultivated literary man — the genre still existed 
in those days — to the cafe of ''Billy" Moulds, 
in University Place, a centre for actors, writers, 

77 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

artists, musicians, as well as business and pro- 
fessional men. There I met the poet Francis 
Saltus, truly a brilliant raconteur; there I ate — 
on off days, financially speaking — the magical 
decoction of the Moulds chef, a bean soup with- 
out compare. And free! There I met about 
all the friends I now possess. 

I have seen editors of trade weeklies, who 
abused each other with a vituperation that was 
vitriolic, forget the ardours of inky bottles and 
drink harmoniously. Such was the atmosphere 
of the estabhshment — also the persuasive per- 
sonality of Mr. Moulds. I once watched the 
famous Wagnerian tenor, Albert Niemann, swal- 
lowing cocktails from a beer-glass. He "lived 
to tell the tale" the next night as Siegmund at 
the opera. 

While I was faithful to this first hospitable 
house I soon found mettle more to my taste in 
and around Union Square. Opposite Steinway 
Hall, then the very hub of musical New York 
and America, were Lienau's and Maurer's, and, 
best of all, there was a certain place presided 
over by a blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked young Ger- 
man, whose amiability was proverbial, whose 
beer was perfection. Need I add that the 
elect saluted him as "Gus," or that to-day he 
is August Llichow, millionaire importer and, 
despite a few ounces extra of flesh, the same hos- 
pitable soul he ever was. 

At Lienau's there gathered such people as 
William Steinway, then a power in the political 

78 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

and musical world, the Anton Seidls, Theodore 
Thomas, Wilhelmj, Mr. and Mrs. C. F. Tretbar, 
the Nahum Stetsons, Scharwenka, Joseffy, Lilli 
Lehmann, Frank Van der Stucken, the Victor 
Herberts, Constantine von Sternberg, Rosenthal, 
Max Heinrich, Mr. and Mrs. Von Inten — the 
very cream of the musical aristocracy. If you 
tired of Lienau's — with the celebrated fat bar- 
man ''Schorch,'' you could go over to Bru- 
bacher's or the Hotel Hungaria. And then there 
was ^'Andy" Dam, host at the Union Square 
Hotel, or Webber's wine-house in Third Avenue. 
A genuine atmosphere of Teutonic "Gemiith- 
lichkeit" existed in those times that are no more. 

The German theatres throve, both at the 
Thalia in the Bowery and Amberg's in Irving 
Place — afterward Conried's, now Rudolph 
Christian's. The old-fashioned German lager- 
beer saloon was still to be found, comfortable 
havens with sand on the floor, pinochle on the 
table, and even a pure brew. Do you recall 
Eckstein's, Grambow's — he was in East Tenth 
Street then — "Peter," in University Place; 
''Pat" Schmenger, Theiss, Hubel, Goerwitz — 
now Allaire's — Oscar Pusch — afterward Louis 
Singer — Greitner, with the high- tenor voice; 
Koster & Bial's, Mock's in Forty-second Street, 
and Terrace Garden when Michael Heumann 
was in charge ? Or the old Monico ! 

Some of these places still exist, but there is 
one that does not. Where Proctor's Theatre 
now stands in East Fifty-eighth Street was a 

79 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

small brewery operated by Peter Buckel. Big 
trees pierced the floors of the piazza, and under 
them you could sit and enjoy yourself; oppo- 
site was Terrace Garden — it is still the same 
old Terrace Garden — always filled with people. 
The street then reminded me of a street in 
Vienna. 

The old Cafe Boulevard was worth while in 
the beginning, before it became a fashionable 
*' slumming '' attraction, and the old Fleischmann 
Vienna Cafe, next to Grace Church, was a centre 
for Conductor Anton Seidl, Antonin Dvorak, the 
Bohemian composer — I am forced to explain 
who these celebrated musicians are, for the horde 
of Philistines that invade our city know nothing 
of art, little of manners, but much of money- 
getting — and many visiting virtuosi ; the excel- 
lent coffee was the magnet. 

Where is the Grapevine ? Where is the spirit 
of Philip Brod? Instead one may go to Jans- 
sen's Hofbraii on Broadway or to Sokol Hall on 
the upper East Side, or to Kaspar's old place 
for Pilsner; or, best of all, to Dr. Knirim of san- 
itarium fame in Pearl Street, where your thirst 
is studied and prescribed for and where you get 
beer at a healthy temperature, not forgetting 
the privilege of capital conversation with the 
worthy doctor. 

I have a friend who devised on paper a Pils- 
ner route thirty years ago, starting from the 
Widow's in Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, and 
ending at the West End in One Hundred and 

80 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

Twenty-fifth Street. There were not so many 
of these life-saving stations then as now, but 
their paucity wet your expectation, not to say 
your whistle. 

Another peculiarity of the long ago was the 
morning ''bracer." Fancy champagne cock- 
tails, a drink of doubtful virtue, consumed by 
the young bloods and old bucks. To-day it 
would be considered criminal to drink cham- 
pagne at 9 A. M. But they did it, those copper- 
lined stomachs. Now at the worst they con- 
sume beer — a wise change. Men seemed more 
vigorous to us then, and seem more fidgety and 
nervous in this year of grace. Perhaps it is an 
illusion. 

There is not so much drunkenness in public 
or private to-day; social opinion is hostile to it. 
The phenomenal ''tanks" of the eighties have 
disappeared, dead or converted. I remember 
at the Everett House, since demolished, an old 
codger, rich enough to own a carryall, in which 
day by day he transported his thirst from tavern 
to tavern, winding up at the Everett. A quaint, 
venerable party, indeed, who grunted, rather 
than spoke. What an existence — riding from 
"jag to jag" and growing in wickedness with 
the years! A character for a novelist, his. 

The more aristocratic never went to ordinary 
bars, but to the bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel 
or the Hoffman House or the old Brunswick or 
the Victoria, where notabihties, chiefly poHtical, 
were as cheap as nuts. We went to the St. 

8i 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

James when Dorval was there, or to Reisen- 
weber's at the Circle when genial John was all 
over his establishment. Really, personahty 
coimted then. Now you rush in as you would 
to a drug store, gulp and away. For little cafes 
like PhiHp B rod's, near the New York Athletic 
Club, the personahty of the host was its main- 
stay. Think of the old Arena when William 
Muschenheim was on deck. What a joyful 
spot it was! Probably one of the reasons that 
''Jack's" (John Dunstan's) cafe is liked so much 
is the promenading between tables nightly of its 
stately host. Personality still counts in an age 
of "canned music" and automatic lunch taverns. 
However, no one need suffer for a drink in New 
York, despite the puritanical antics of the pro- 
hibitionists (for revenue). 

n 

By a decided negative must be answered the 
question: Are the chop-houses as good as of 
yore? (Have you ever noticed when people 
begin to talk of English cookery they say ''yore" 
or ''anent," as they say "oui" at Mouquin's, or 
" ausgezeichnet " at Liichow's?) No, they are 
not, and you may point out a lot of places and 
I'll say: These are gorgeous establishments, but 
where are the fat English mutton-chops, the 
musty old ale, and, don't let us forget it, the 
peaceful atmosphere? 

At Browne's, then in a side street off Broad- 

82 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

way, you were at your ease. In Adam Engel's 
it was the same. Or at the Studio in Sixth 
Avenue, or Stewart's, or Wallace's, Martin's, or 
numerous places in the lower part of the town 
whose very names I've forgotten. And where has 
gone Parker's, which stood in Sixth Avenue near 
Thirty-fourth Street? In Fourth Avenue, at 
Twenty-first Street, was a chop-house kept by 
a German named Eschbach. It was small, but 
delightful. There, once upon a time, I listened 
an entire evening to the muted conversation of 
Rudyard KipHng, who was piloted to the house 
by his brother-in-law, Wolcott Balestier. Here 
assembled nightly actors, mostly from the 
Lyceum Theatre, in the palmy days of Daniel 
Frohman, and there came the prince of talkers, 
Maurice Barrymore. 

I was sorry to see Eschbach's go, though I 've 
no doubt ^'Jack's," Healey's, Browne's — now in 
Broadway — are just as good. But I'm not as 
good, and that is the pith of all rambling mem- 
ories by old blades with a grudge against pres- 
ent conditions. (Grouch is a more fashionable 
word.) You would if you could, but you can't ! 
Anyhow, in my prime — and I'm not yet pre- 
cisely tottering — they didn't call a Welsh rabbit 
a "rarebit." (That's a knockout for pot-house 
aesthetics !) 

One oyster house at least shows but little 
change, except in its increased cHentele. I 
mean Dorlon's. I think there was a Dorlon's 
down-town somewhere. Fulton Market, wasn't 

83 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

it? I only frequented the Madison Square res- 
taurant with the oyster clock outside. What 
jokes have been made by men (a trifle how come 
ye so!) about that clock. ^'I was up to 'Y' 
minutes past '0/" cries one chap, and is con- 
vulsed at his own nimble wit. Alas ! the pathos 
of distant humour. Silsbe's is still in existence 
in Brooklyn, near John Ryan's famous Pilsner 
station (wireless). 

Do they still eat macaroni and consume 
Chianti in New York? If they do, show me a 
Moretti — like the old Moretti in Fourteenth 
and in Twenty-first Streets — a Martinelli (in 
Fifth Avenue), a Solari — ^^in University Place — 
a Riccadonna in Union Square, or even a 
Pedro's, in Centre Street. The truth is that 
there are hundreds of Italian restaurants where 
the spaghetti and the wine (Californian) are as 
good as at Moretti's. Ah! but the old man 
could cook. Those veal-chops, the spaghetti, 
rich and abundant, and the oily salad ! Excla- 
mation-points fail to express the gustatory sen- 
sations at Moretti's. Another restaurant where 
personaHty was a heavy asset. 

At Pedro's, down-town, discovered by news- 
paper men, the surroundings were simple to the 
point of dusty napkins and faded wall-paper, but 
all was forgiven because of the flavour. Now 
we eat to the accompaniment of delirious tango 
music, pay tips to greedy Greeks, and go to bed 
hungry for a savoury dish. 

Cockroach Hall, so nicknamed, was farther 

84 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

up-town, and it was well patronised till the ru- 
mour got out that cockroaches were seen float- 
ing in the soup a menestrone. After that I went 
over to Maria del Prato's in West Twelfth 
Street, where ^'Mickey Finn" threw bread at 
you and you liked the poetic attention. (Maria 
retired in afiiuent circumstances and was last 
seen by Vance Thompson in Venice, healthy 
and homesick for Gotham.) 

Both the Mouquins' restaurants, up and down 
town, are about the same as they ever were. 
But a pure French cuisine in New York is not 
possible. The "custom of the country" inter- 
venes, meaning the palate, and imperceptibly a 
chef adapts himself to his environment. Never- 
theless we have here a true cosmopohtan cuisine, 
from green corn to caviare, from snails to clams. 

In the old days you singled out certain restau- 
rants for certain dishes. At Sieghortner's, in 
Lafayette Place (now Street), or at Heim's, in 
Twenty-seventh Street (near the old Browne 
chop-house), you were served with German 
dishes of the rarest, also the most expensive. 
Liichow's, where delicacies gathered from the 
four quarters of the globe may be had, has not a 
cheap tariff; indeed, it is a costly one, but the 
two Germans I mention were very dear for those 
days. 

One item was the Rhine and Moselle wine — 
the best bouquets, together with imported hare 
— a luxury then — and Canada mutton — an- 
other luxury, but not now — and you paid a 

85 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

pretty reckoning. I recall Theodore Thomas, 
the great conductor, and his concert-master, 
Max Bendix, as frequent visitors at Heim's. 
(Thomas was an epicure; Seidl ate what was set 
before him, but craved strong black Havanas.) 

At the Sinclair House, also a memory, you 
ordered " angels on horseback " — in other words, 
fish-cakes with poached eggs atop. Its tomato 
soup was capital. The old As tor House had 
its ^'specialties," as had Smith & McNeil's, 
now vanished; as had Lyons's, on the Bowery — 
they gave you better beefsteak than you could 
get in a restaurant of a higher class. Oyster- 
patties were better made, and raw oysters at 
ten cents a dozen (no napkins) seemed celestial. 
And the hot-corn Mammy, with her turban 
and far, clear cry at midnight (in Third Avenue, 
too) ''Hot corn! Hot corn!" Cobweb Hall is 
still in existence, though I believe the old pro- 
prietor is dead. Even the salt was saltier, and 
the butter more buttery than the sandy substi- 
tute and oleomargarine in contemporary usage. 

What's become of the Httle withered ItaUan 
who sold matches from Fourteenth to Forty- 
second Streets every night, with his comical 
farewell: "Gooda nighta. Boss"? There be 
men still living and in full possession of their 
strength who not only frequented Andy Horn's 
at the Bridge (there was only one bridge in 
those remote days), and also "Doc" Perry's 
drug store, there to absorb editorial culture and 
'' reportorial " quinine (sHghtly disguised). Of 

86 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

course, they were newspaper men, not journal- 
ists, of whom the late "Joe" Howard always 
said: "It's the money of newspaper men that 
pays the funeral expenses of journalists." 

m 

The Grand Union Hotel, which is no longer 
on the map of life, was for years my pet hostelry 
— was truly a landmark, and Simeon Ford and 
Samuel Shaw national figures. 

The "holy of holies" in my time was Del- 
monico's. To-day it has a hundred rivals. Nev- 
ertheless it remains Delmonico's, the unique. 
Sherry's is very attractive — the name is an 
aperitive — and such gorgeous hostleries as the 
Gotham and the St. Regis have menus to match. 
But being a democratic person, I prefer down- 
town Haan's, Bustanoby's, the Brevoort, or the 
Lafayette — the oldest and the best of Martin's 
restaurants. I never cared for his Delmonico 
undertaking; it was neither good Martin nor 
real Delmonico. At Shanley's — the original 
Shanley's was on Broadway below Thirtieth 
Street — Rector's, Churchill's, or the cafes of 
the Plaza, Savoy, Netherland, Biltmore, Vander- 
bilt, or Ritz you can order what you wish and 
get it. I find Httle change in the Savoy Cafe, 
and I am still fond of the al fresco character of 
down- town Delmonico's, in Beaver Street. 

On that street there are two or three Italian 
and French restaurants — "Frank's," for in- 

87 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

stance — which for wine, cuisine, and service 
have no superior up-town. Then there is An- 
gelo's in Pearl Street, and Farrish's chop-house 
in John Street. When James Breslin conducted 
the Gilsey House it was a hotel of the first mag- 
nitude. And there are Billy the oysterman's, 
Pontin's in Franklin Street, and other resorts 
still in existence. 

As for eating around and about New York, 
the road-houses are legion since the advent of 
the motor-car, and they have hurt the business 
of the New York restaurants. Over on Long 
Island, up in Connecticut, down on Staten 
Island, you are royally fed at royal prices. 
You can stop in Central Park at the Casino 
(Dorval) or at McGown's Pass Tavern, and 
then make a dash for Claremont, the most 
picturesquely situated of all the river houses. 
There is the Abbey, or Ben Riley's — which 
evokes the old Arrow-head Inn, Saratoga Lake 

— or some pleasant French cafes on both sides 
of the Hudson. The old Hudson Inn farther 
down Fifth Avenue still holds the fort as a sol- 
itary survival. But when in pursuit of the 
Amber Witch out of town, I don't waste time 
at any of the beaches — where they torture 
beer into the semblance of discoloured ice-water 

— nor do I go up the river, but simply get on 
the Brighton line, dismount at Consumers' Park, 
don't even look at the ball game at Ebbets Field, 
and march into Fred Winter's garden, where 
the herculean proprietor — he is a prize- winning 

88 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

athlete — holds gentle sway, where the view of 
either Prospect Park or the Brooklyn Institute 
consoles the eye, and where — but why con- 
tinue? The crickets are booming in Flatbush, 
the hunters are up at Sheepshead Bay, God's 
in his heaven and all's well with Tammany. 
This mixture of Walt Whitman, good old Sir 
Thomas Browne, Robert Browning, and Plato 
(all Tammany braves are Platonists) must be 
set down to the heady nature of my discourse. 
But the greater the truth the greater the car- 
icature. 

I promised as a sort of a coda to tell you of 
the absence in New York of the fried oyster. 
Your cockney-bred New Yorker looks askance 
at you if you mention fried oysters. No won- 
der. The leaden, lumpy, greasy, tasteless wad 
of flabby batter and hard, shrivelled oyster that 
masks in Manhattan as a fried oyster is enough 
to revolt the maw of a Patagonian. 

I well remember Charles Delmonico telHng 
me years ago, and with a gesture of despair, 
that he had sent a chef to FinelK's in Philadel- 
phia; that said chef, a man of imagination and 
technique, ate himself biHous at Finelli's trying 
to solve the secret of the magical batter; that 
he returned home with this secret — oUve-oil, 
the pan spluttering red-hot, and the oysters 
quickly dropped in and harpooned at once — 
and the first day he served the oysters at the 
Broadway restaurant he lost his job. He had 
absolutely failed. 

89 



THE MAW OF THE MONSTER 

But, strange to relate, in Philadelphia there 
were others besides FinelH who knew how to 
serve a fried oyster so that it tasted like a cross 
between a poem and a croquette. Both Phil- 
adelphia and Baltimore are renowned for their 
terrapin, red snapper, ducks, pepper-pot, deviled 
crabs, lobsters, and oysters — better oysters 
than Cape May coves, about the middle of Sep- 
tember, there are nowhere. McGowan's, in 
Sansom Street in Philadelphia, can give you 
the best of terrapin and fried oysters, and even 
in Finelli's time there was a certain ''Billy" 
Van Hook, who was celebrated for his fried oys- 
ters — his wife really cooked them. (Here is a 
potent reason why woman should have the vote.) 
She is still alive at her restaurant on Library 
Street, where the oysters are as poetic as ever. 

But New York never imported the dish; in 
fact, I don't mind confessing that in the matter 
of sea food and its preparation New York still 
lags in the rear of Baltimore and Philadelphia. 

However, on this rather pessimistic note I 
shan't end; after all, sea food is not the only 
reason for a good kitchen. The maw of New 
York is the most capacious in the world, and 
it is also the best-filled. 



90 



VI 

THE NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND 

EYES 



In New York "the night hath a thousand 
eyes.'' That is why all cats are not grey by 
night. The Great White Way, pleasure-ground 
of the world, is the incandescent oven of the 
metropoUs, and under its fierce glare all felines 
appear alike. But grey, never. 

The sad-coloured procession that slowly moves 
through Piccadilly, the merry crush of the Fried- 
richstrasse, and the gayer swirl on the Grand 
Boulevard are not so cosmopolitan as Broad- 
way on a summer's night. Every nationaHty 
swells the stream of petticoats; "As the rill 
that runs from Bulicame to be portioned out 
among the sinful women," sang Dante, and one 
exclaims: Lo ! this is the city of Dis, when in the 
maelstrom of faces; faces blanched by regret, 
sunned by crime, beaming with sin ; faces rusted 
by vain virtue, wan, weary faces, and the tri- 
umphant regard of them that are loved. You 
think of Bill Sykes and his cry of terror: "The 
eyes, the eyes!" 

91 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

The city has begun its nocturnal carnival, 
and like all organised orgies the spectacle is of 
a consuming melancholy. No need to moralise; 
cause and effect speak with an appalling clarity. 
Through this tohubohu of noise a sinister med- 
ley of farce and flame, the Will-to-Enjoy, winds 
like a stream of red-hot resistless lava. In de- 
scribing it your pen makes melodramatic twists 
or else hops deliriously. 

The day birds have gone to bed, the night 
fowl are afield. The owl is a denizen of the dark 
and Minerva's counsel, for all that wisdom is 
not in the air. Even veritable cats as they 
sKnk or race across the highway are bathed in 
the blaze of a New York night with its thousands 
of eyes. No, all cats are not grey by night in 
Gotham. 

But from the heights, what a different pic- 
ture! Then the magic of the city begins to 
operate; that missing soul of New York shyly 
peeps forth in the nocturnal transfiguration. 
Not, however, in Broadway, with its thousand 
Hes and Hghts, not in opera-houses, theatres, 
restaurants, or roof-gardens, but on some perch 
of vantage from which the scene in all its mys- 
terious beauty may be studied. You see a 
cluster of lights on the West Side Circle, a lad- 
der of fire the pivot. Farther down, theatreland 
dazzles with its tongues of flame. Across in 
the cool shadows are the level lines of twinkling 
points of the bridges. There is always the 
sense of waters not afar. 

92 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

All the hotels, from the Majestic to the Plaza, 
from the Biltmore to the Vanderbilt, are tier 
upon tier starry with illumination. Beyond the 
coppery gleam of the great erect synagogue in 
Fifth Avenue is the placid toy lake in the park. 
Fifth and Madison Avenues are long shafts of 
bluish-white electric globes. The monohths 
burn to a fire-god, votive offerings. The park, 
as if liquefied, flows in plastic rhythms, a lake 
of velvety foHage, a mezzotint of dark green 
dividing the east from the west. The dim, 
scattered plains of granite housetops are like a 
cemetery of titans. At night New York loses 
its New World aspect. Sudden furnace fires 
from tall chimneys leap from the Brooklyn or 
New Jersey shores; they are of purely commer- 
cial origin, yet you look for Whistler's rockets. 
Battery Park and the bay are positively operatic, 
the setting for some thrilHng fairy spectacle. A 
lyric moonlight paves a path of tremulous sil- 
ver along the water. From Morningside Drive 
you gaze across a sunken country of myriad 
lamps; on Riverside the panorama exalts. We 
are in a city exotic, semibarbaric, the fantasy 
of an Eastern sorcerer mad enough to evoke 
from immemorial seas a lost Atlantis. 

Below in the theatres are the moving pic- 
tures, those tantalising ocular spasms, or op- 
tical shadow for dramatic substance. Let us go 
to one of these mute entertainments (barring the 
clattering orchestra), and to the best, '' Cabiria,'* 
manufactured by a man of genius, Gabriele 

93 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

d'Annunzio, out of shreds and patches and frag- 
ments from Flaubert's ^'Salammbo," *' The Last 
Days of Pompeii," "Samson and Delilah," and 
a dozen dime novels; a monstrous olla podrida 
of incidents, a jumble of movements, all without 
sense or relevance, nevertheless so filled with 
action that the eye is rapt by the sheer velocity 
of the film. No story can ever be definitely re- 
lated, for the essence of photography is the 
arrest of motion, and despite the ingenious mim- 
icry of movement, there is no narration, only 
poses. 

The very faults of photography are exag- 
gerated; the figures in the foreground are giant- 
Hke, in the middle distance or distant perspec- 
tive they are those of pygmies, so that in a room 
a woman's figure at the edge of the picture sug- 
gests a giantess, while her maid, supposed to 
be a few feet away, is a miniature. And then 
the wavering, swimming, flickering of sharp 
points of light — the eye is more fatigued than 
at a dramatic performance. Why music if the 
films suffice? The truth is that the moving 
pictures are a remarkable mechanical device, 
but never for a .moment can be considered in 
the category of art. 

Those mountains belching sparks and fire are 
sensational, but not artistic pictures; panto- 
mimes with tableaux is a better description. 
One scene had an element of vraisemblance; 
it depicted a sweeping foreground, such as 
Daubigny was fond of in his rare, larger can- 

94 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

vases; a troop of savage horsemen appear on 
the ridge of the hill, silhouettes in strong relief 
against a clear sky. If these figures hadn't 
cavorted down the slope, the picture would 
have been an impressive one, but the move- 
ment, paradoxical as it may seem, killed the 
illusion. 

Great art can suggest the rhythm of mul- 
titude on a flat surface, but the pubKc, like 
Mr. Crummies, demands its real pump. The 
swimming episode with the splashing water is 
^' real " enough, but there is no art in it. I mean 
no illusion. Those Salammbo tableaux in tem- 
ples, particularly the scaling of the citadel — 
Spendius, you may remember in Flaubert's im- 
mortal romance, got into Carthage with the 
barbarian chief Matho by way of the aqueducts 

— are duly exciting; but one phase of Flaubert 
and the picture lives, isn't a shaky simulacrum. ' 

When it was all over, when the last strident 
blast of the brass, the last howl of the chorus, and 
and the last absurd printed ''plot" on the cur- 
tain had ceased, I felt as if I had been at a ban- 
quet where the food and drink were whisked off 
the table before I could touch them. 

Of what mental and emotional calibre are 
the audiences that frequent such shows? The 
world has been seized by a craze for them. 
They demand the minimum of thought from 
their spectators — who, incidentally, chew gum 

— and give to the eye the maximum of sensa- 
tion. The attitude is purely receptive. You 

95 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

watch untouched by emotion the most "thrill- 
ing" spectacles and hairbreadth escapes. Any- 
thing like simplicity is a bore. 

I've tried to sit through so-called plays; IVe 
heard certain film actors and actresses — God 
save the mark! — called "great," and their 
gestures gave me the same impression one gets 
before a cageful of monkeys. Only the mon- 
keys are more amusing. 

This shadowland is never dramatic, never 
poetically suggestive, never human. The ab- 
sence of the human voice, a marvellous instru- 
ment that bridges the space between us and our 
neighbour, is depressing, as depressing as the 
enforced silence in a hospital ward. The sub- 
stitute, usually vulgar, noisy music, is an im- 
pertinence. A diversion for children, an aid to 
science, an entertainment for deaf-mutes, but 
not an art for intelligent people. 

What has become of our taste these latter 
years? "Canned" .music, mechanical pianos, 
moving pictures, dancing, these be thy gods, 
PhiHstia ! 

I suppose the time predicted by H. G. Wells 
is at hand, a time when reading shall have van- 
ished, and with it the other arts; huge gramo- 
phones will furnish the public its news and 
bring to the parlour the muse of the mud gutter 
— and literature — and the moving pictures 
will be so extraordinary that all the world will 
be a film. Truly, a millennium of vulgarity and 
intellectual darkness, the glorious results of uni- 

96 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

versal education ! The second coming of the 
Huns and Tartars of ignorance is overwhehn- 
ing us. 

n 

Years ago I wrote a story of a musical com- 
poser whose advent sets singing and dancing 
the entire world, so potent is the appeal of his 
rhythmic and magical art. In Italy his progress 
was that of a trailing comet. The feminine 
madness first manifested itself there and swept 
the countryside with epidemical fury. Wher- 
ever he played the dancing mania set in and the 
soldiery could not put it down by force of arms. 

Nietzsche's dancing philosoph-er, Zarathustra, 
was incarnated in Illowski's compositions. Like 
the nervous obsessions of mediaeval times, this 
music set howling, leaping, and writhing volatile 
ItaHans, until it began to assume the propor- 
tions of a new evangel, a hysterical hallucina- 
tion that bade defiance to law, doctors, even the 
decencies of life. 

For women his music was the moth's desire. 
Wherever he went were women — women and 
children. Old legends of the ancient gods were 
revived. The great god Pan was said to be 
abroad. Rusthng in the night air set blushing 
young folk. Like a torrid simoon, an emotional 
renascence traversed Europe. The fountains of 
the great deeps of democracy were breaking up. 
Music was become ruler and the world and his 
wife danced on the pinions of song. Likewise 

97 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

on their heads and heels. The very earth was 
shaken at its axis. The dance was triumphant. 

Well, some such fantastical nonsense I wrote, 
but after I laid down Rupert Hughes's brilHant 
book, What Will People Say ? I reaUsed the seri- 
ousness of the present situation. But Tango, 
instead of my Russian composer, Illowski, is 
king. 

I determined to investigate. I haunted roof- 
gardens (so-called, though some of them are 
subterranean), I jostled the common people, my 
own kind, in nickel dance pavilions; on glassy 
floors I saw with wide-open eyes couples ill- 
assorted but whirling, and amid tropical shrub- 
bery on sultry nights I sweated for my sins, that 
I might satisfy the meanest of all venial vices, 
curiosity. 

I became a regular Paul Pry. I edged my 
way through panting humans to catch some 
gleam in their fever-sunken eyes which would 
betray the psychology of their obsession. I went 
to palm gardens and cabarets, I saw people lift- 
ing their legs at ice-cream dancing ^'parlours"; 
Sunday-school dancing did not scandalise me, 
for I rem.embered that David danced before the 
ark (or was it Noah? I know that Noah, too, 
had his ark) ; and at a church picnic the dominie 
danced, and there were film pictures. 

At the Astor, the Vanderbilt, atop of the 
Strand, in the Biltmore, at the Jardin de Danse, 
the McAlpin, the New Amsterdam, at the Ritz, 
at Rector's, on Madison Square Tower, at a 

98 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

half-hundred other places I sought and did not 
find. The novel I mention had inflamed my 
imagination as the dancing had evidently in- 
flamed the imagination of its author. But Mr. 
Hughes was luckier than I. 

This is what I saw everywhere — a composite 
picture. Let .me select the Biltmore, whose 
floor next to the roof, with its approaches, de- 
serves the appellation palatial. A vast dinner 
salle, an oblong dancing floor, the general scheme 
of decoration a muddle of Japanese and various 
discordant elements, a high estrade in which a 
weary orchestra always played in one tonality, 
the placid key of F; towering above was a tall 
statue of Neptune, hence the title of the floor, 
"Les Cascades." Why Neptune and his trident 
(he looked like Bernard Shaw fresh from the 
bath) in a dancing salon I can't say. 

A water-god, his presence had a decidedly 
temperate effect — I saw little if any drinking. 
The Herr Oberkellner seemed shocked when I 
asked for plain hops. I argued with him that 
in the entire room there wasn't any one drink- 
ing champagne. 

'^Ah, non !" he repKed, "the war, you know !" 
"It's Neptune, you mean," I retorted. Then 
the band began to play, and in the tepid key 
of F I forgot the beverage, my eyes agog. 

Ah ! where was the orgastic fury, where the 
exotic abandon of these dancers? No spoor of 
delirium, and absolutely nothing bacchanaKan. 
Intoxicated by the ice-water that they so reck- 

99 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

lessly absorbed, I saw middle-aged, bald business 
men with their mature partners (their wives, of 
course; your "Go up, thou baldhead!" doesn't 
dance with maturity unless it is a matrimonial 
obhgation), sHde and sHp and twist and twirl in 
such a decorous fashion that I shuddered. 

I remember that when I arrived in Paris for 
the first time — it was October, 1878 — the 
Jardin Mabille did not close its doors till later. 
I have participated in the Bal Bullier on the 
"other side of the river," and I knew Mont- 
martre when it was Montmartre and not a Pari- 
sian Chautauqua. I've seen all the cancans 
worth mentioning — rather, unmentionable — ■ 
and while I did not expect in our staid Quakerish 
old New York any such license, I did yearn for 
a little more animation. Why, it was a Brook- 
lyn sociable on a larger scale ! 

Occasionally a Httle pot-bellied fellow tried 
to clutch his massive partner, but in vain. It 
was a living picture of the old woodcut by 
Rowlandson, "Thou art so near and yet so 
far," in sober terms. The portentous gravity 
of the entire function impressed me. Perhaps 
these very middle-class-appearing persons were 
overcome by the magnificence of their surround- 
ings; perhaps the jarring decoration oppressed 
them, or it may have been the Turkish-bath 
atmosphere. I was afraid to ask the head 
waiter, for I saw that I was under the ban. 
The key of F, damnable iteration, struck up a 
valse rhythm, and then the dancers, one and all, 

100 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

essayed a two-step. The cross rhythms, so 
piquant in Chopin's A flat valse, were translated 
from the psychical to the physical plane, and 
fearing for my morals I sneaked away, won- 
dering if there were such dances as the Tango, 
Maxixe, or Gummy Grip, the Lame Duck, Fox 
Trot, or Honey Bug — perhaps I should say, 
Bunny Hug. After paying my bill at the hat- 
check department I found I had just enough 
money left to go home, and home I went. I had 
eaten my peck of dirt that day, and I should 
have been satisfied. But I was not. 

The next night found me on the roof of the 
New Amsterdam, said to be the true home of 
twinkhng heels. Also the spot favoured by the 
Mayor and his official family; ours is a dancing 
administration. Anything Ziegfeldian ought to 
be edifying, and I found myself between two 
musical fires — an orchestra of coloured men and 
a band of Spanish-looking gents who plucked 
guitars, or balalaikas, and made music of a more 
exotic but less rhythmic character than their 
dark-skinned rivals. 

These rival organisations hammered away at 
one another, and there was some zest in their 
performance. The dancers, too, displayed fire. 
But the men, the men, why will they dance? 
Good and bad, they all look so stupid in their 
dinner jackets (a costume devised for waiters), 
their legs Hke stovepipes, their thick-soled shoes 
clumping about. Even if a woman is clumsy, 
her drapery attenuates her lack of grace. In 

lOI 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

costume a man is barely endurable as a dancer 

— say in the opera or Russian ballet — but in 
our ugly daily dress he is simply absurd. 

There were several young chaps who danced 
Hghtly enough, but grace they knew not. The 
girls made a more pleasing impression. They 
exhibited all the new steps, most of them idiotic 
in their simian distortion of natural rhythms, 
and they gyrated with a certain degree of reck- 
lessness. But at Steeplechase the dancing is 
heartier, more clever, and at any negro ball the 
coloured lassies outpoint their white sisters in 
elasticity, in swaying rhythms, and diabolic 
abandon. Compared with the dancing I saw 
at Madrid and Seville of Spanish gipsies, some- 
times on table tops, all that I've witnessed thus 
far in New York is tame and so respectable. 

Did you ever watch a Polish woman dance 
the Mazourka? Or a Hungarian the Czardas 

— I don't mean the mock-turtle paprika of our 
dance palaces? These so-called ^'fashionable" 
fakers who wriggle to the admiration of a heavy- 
footed crowd are caricatures. The dance is not 
in their nerves, it's in their pocketbooks. I 
understand the success of the moving pictures 

— it's a lot of gaudy nonsense for little money, 
but the meaning of the dancing mania has taken 
me much time to solve. An excellent custom 
for young and old it is, a foe to the use of med- 
icine, and generally provocative to the appetite, 
yet the search for health does not account for 
its popularity. 

I02 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

My notion is this, and I may be mistaken: 
In the dance the world, instead of playing spec- 
tator, is itself the chief actor in the pageant. 
On this popular stage every one may star. They 
can have all the pleasures of professional artistic 
life without its penalties. The ego has found 
its own (shade of Max Stirner !) — and theatres, 
moving pictures, even motor-cars, must bow low 
to the victorious dancing dervishes. I am look- 
ing forward to the aeroplane as the next avatar 
of pleasure. Till then America will be satisfied 
with perfectly proper dancing capers, films, and 
chewing-gum. However, we outlived the roller- 
skating and the rinks thirty-five years ago; so 
let us not despair. But the incredible abuse that 
was lavished upon poor, respectable Salome of 
Strauss and Wilde is, like the proverbial curse, 
coming home to roost — more's the pity. 

Ill 

The room is long and narrow, its walls mir- 
rored; the ceiHng is too low for the good of the 
lungs, because every one was smoking the night 
I went in after leaving the Strand. It was too 
early for ''Jack's," too late for the vaudeville 
at Hammerstein's Victoria, so I thought of the 
Canary Cage, the most popular of resorts given 
over to Bohemians and other rainbows. Half- 
cabaret — where the solo performers are the 
guests — half bird bathtub, where the wines do 
not prompt to a fall, the Cage is the most engag- 
ing of all the nightly spectacles in Gotham. 

103 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

Naturally for the ''highbrow," the ''low- 
brow/' or "bonehead" is not made free of this 
republic of arts, letters, and canaries; I did not 
arrive too soon. The band up-stairs was play- 
ing at its top notch, the diners had descended 
to the ground floor, and the windmills were 
agitating their arms and theories in every corner. 

There sat the professor who nightly demon- 
strates how the Japanese could have captured 
Berlin in three moves: move one, with the salt- 
cellar; move two, with a teaspoon; the third, 
with the fork; positively, the table is worn with 
ruts because of this continuous war strategy. 
When he isn't warring, the professor whispers 
to you — confidentially, of course — about the 
young genius he has discovered, a painter who 
can give points to Cezanne. But at bottom, 
he is conservative. He never favoured the 
"extreme left" of crazy cubists and concubin- 
ism, expressivists, zonists, futurists, vorticists, 
and post-impressionists who make their drinks 
warm with their oaths and rantings. Indeed, he 
shivered every time a shriek of "Nietzsche" or 
" Marinetti " came from across the room. There 
sat the choice cenacle at a long table, putting 
away everything from absinthe to zoolak. (I 
am sorry to state that the man who drank the 
latter was a nuisance.) 

A Matisse-versus-Picasso controversy was in 
full sway when I joined the party — not with- 
out audible dissent from some boys who called 
me "that antiquated bric-a-brac who thinks 

104 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

Chopin wrote music." I knew these admirers 
of Arnold Schoenberg, and I knew that they had 
never heard a note of the Vienna composer, and 
when they did they wouldn't be able to dis- 
tinguish it from Yankee Doodle. 

But the name ! Ha ! a musical iconoclast ! 
Down with the old fogies ! Down with Richard 
Strauss, the reactionary ! They smashed repu- 
tations. They sneered at the major gods, also 
the minor. One person (he wasn't over twenty), 
attacked Walt Whitman as the type of the per- 
fect classicist, and after the noise of broken 
glass had ceased and the head waiter had sep- 
arated the combatants, the table was cleared 
of broken bottles, and the argument began 
anew. A genius trumpeted like an elephant, 
and the cock-crowing evoked memories of the 
Latin Quarter. 

I was captivated. My youth was renewed by 
the battle, the sound of cannon, and the neigh- 
ing of the steeds; I, too, said *'Ha ! ha !" to the 
mules — at least they were as stubborn — but 
I was ruled out. No nineteenth century, back- 
number aesthetics ! Give us futurism or give 
us obUvion; and they sought the latter at the 
very spigot. 

I was not disconcerted. It was only natural 
for the younger generation to kick in the panels 
of the door. Grandfathers and other antiquated 
relatives should submit to curfew. And the 
tolling of young bells is the tolHng of their knell. 
So I listened, remembering it did not seem so 

105 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

many years ago that I had helped in the same 
sacred cause of ''knock your neighbours while 
you live; else get knocked." How this gang of 
painters, sculptors, poets, etchers, philosophers, 
writers, and pudding-heads did hit every head 
that moved on the contemporary map of Htera- 
ture or art ! 

In my time critics quarrelled over the emo- 
tional quaHty and technical merits of poets. I 
discovered that to-day in America a poet is a 
joke. Let us wrangle over the rights of inter- 
esting criminals, the ethics of sewer-pipes, or 
the sentimental social rehabihtation of moral 
lame ducks (not drakes) ; but poetry — fudge ! 
Marinetti writes poetry. (So does a telegraph 
operator.) The leader, who is a prose rhapso- 
dist doubled by a vaudevillist, challenged me 
to duel, the weapons to be Velasquez and 
Matisse. I selected Bach, and the matter was 
dropped. An Irishman always knows the trick 
of spKtting the difference, and I think Johann 
Sebastian Bach a greater painter than either the 
Spaniard or the Frenchman in dispute. 

A Scandinavian made us roar at the yarn, a 
new one, about the son of B jornstjerne B jornson, 
the Norwegian poet, who had intruded himself 
uninvited on the bridge of an ocean steamship. 
When poKtely asked by the captain to go to the 
lower deck he haughtily responded: "Do you 
know to whom you are speaking? Do you 
know you are addressing the son of Norway's 
greatest poet ? " 

io6 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

"No matter," replied the captain softly. 
"You must leave the bridge, Mr. Ibsen." The 
poor man must have fallen overboard at the icy 
irony of the answer. 

A minute later a fresh conflict was in progress. 
Some one cried: "Ibsen! Oh, the Land of the 
Midnight Whiskers ! Why not drag in some 
other mouldy dramatist, like Moliere or Shake- 
speare?" 

"Or Bernard Shaw?" came in a flash, and the 
air was thick with war-cries. "Nietzsche!" 
^'Schoenberg !" '' Wedekind !" ''Marinetti !" 
"Matisse!" "Picasso!" "George Luks can 
smash the slats of the whole crowd for pure 
paint." The professor shook both fists at the 
ceihng, groaning with Celtic emphasis: "Ah! 
Les rates." The band which had come down- 
stairs, intoned the Marseillaise, and the house 
vibrated with the refrain, "Marchons; march- 
ons!" "This is not a 'Canary Cage,'" I rumi- 
nated, "but a cage of young eagles. The name 
of the place should be changed to the ' Cafe of 
To-Morrow.'" Here the sun never sets, but 
always rises, though it never seems to attain 
the meridian — possibly because these brilliant 
midnight sons go to bed every day before noon. 

I made my retreat from this covert of van- 
dals behind the cloud of a thunderous chorus, 
in which verbal splinters floated: "Mari- 
netti!" "Encore de biere!" "Matisse!" "Im- 
becile!" "Schoenberg!" "Hund!" "Nietzsche!" 
"Let's all go up to Jack's !" 

107 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

I quickly melted in the mist as the band 
moved up the avenue, chanting and praying. 

From his attic of dreams, from his tower of 
ivory and spleen, the morose impressionist saw 
unrolling beneath him a double lane of Hght, 
tall poles, bearing twy-electric lamps, either side 
of nocturnal Madison Avenue, throwing patches 
of metallic blue upon the glistening damp pave 
— veritable fragments of shivering luminosity; 
saw the interminable stretch of humid asphalt 
stippled by rare notes of dull crimson; exi- 
gent lanterns of some fat citizen contractor. 
Occasional trolley-cars, projecting vivid shafts 
of canary colour into the mist, traversed with 
vertiginous speed and hollow thunder the 
dreary roadway. It was now midnight. On 
the street were buttresses of granite; at un- 
ryhthmic intervals gloomy apartment-houses 
reared to the clouds their oblong ughness, at- 
tracting by their magnetism the vagrom winds 
which tease, agitate, and buffet unfortunate 
ones afoot in this melancholy canon of marble, 
steam, and steel. A huge, belated, bug-like mo- 
tor-car, its antennae vibrating with fire, sKpped 
tremulously through the casual pools of shad- 
owed cross-lights; swam and hummed so softly 
that it might have been mistaken for a novel, 
timorous, amphibian monster, neither boat nor 
machine. To the faded nerves of the fantastic 
impressionist aloft in his ineluctable cage this 
undulating blur of blue and grey and frosty 

io8 



NIGHT HATH A THOUSAND EYES 

white, these ebon silhouettes of hushed brassy- 
palaces, and the shimmering wet night did but 
evoke the exasperating tableau of a petrified 
Venice. Venice overtaken by a drought eternal; 
an aerial Venice with cliff-dwellers in lieu of 
harmonious gondohers; a Venice of tarnished 
twilights, in which canals were transposed to 
the key of stone; across which trailed and 
dripped superficial rain from dusk and impla- 
cable skies; rain upright and scowling. And 
the soul of the poet ironically posed its own 
acid pessimism in the presence of this salty, 
chill, and cruel city — a Venice of receded seas, 
a spun-iron Venice, sans hope, sans faith, sans 
vision. 



109 



VII 

BRAIN AND SOUL AND 
POCKETBOOK 



There is no escaping the spirit of pragma- 
tism which circulates about Columbia Univer- 
sity. It is in the air, and you encounter it as 
soon as you reach Broadway at the One Hundred 
and Sixteenth Street Subway. 

Here, you say to yourself, is the very cortex 
of the city; it represents its intellectual ideals, 
and with the unfailing mimicry of nature, it 
seems to be what it represents — I mean its 
simulacrum gives one the impression of a very 
busy centre of study: above all a practical one. 

No mooning on these sunlit heights as you 
would at Harvard or Oxford. The sternly prag- 
matic ideal of New York is reflected in its chief 
seat of learning. The wooded walks and soli- 
tude-haunted spots of certain European uni- 
versities have no counterparts here. Even the 
George Grey Barnard statue Pan looks askance 
at his own pagan nudity. Business first, dream- 
ing afterward — if at all — might be the motto 
blazoned at Columbia. 

The bustle even during the summer session 

no 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

is highly gratifying. Groups of young women 
may be seen going into commons or standing at 
the hall of philosophy. The hard, unromantic 
aspect of the various buildings — magnificent, 
some of them — coupled with the encroachment 
of the town, robs our university of all provincial 
colour; not even the green campus, where they 
play everything from Maeterlinck to croquet, 
disturbs the hard, self-assured picture of scho- 
lastic success. 

One need not fear that at Columbia any use- 
less art will be found encumbering the curricu- 
lum. The aesthetic note is absent, but it is 
more than compensated by the 'presence of the 
cheerful pragmatic or the powerful material- 
istic. And yet — and yet I think that huge 
doses of Ralph Waldo Emerson should be daily 
administered to offset the deadening of lofty 
ideals; above all, to stifle the pernicious belief 
in majorities, in quantity instead of quality, 
in the mob in place of the man. There are no 
types; there is only the individual. But what 
is pragmatism to one man, to another may be 
poison. 

I could wish for more aesthetic "atmosphere'^ 
about Alma Mater. The equipment is of an em- 
inent order. I don't know how many students 
are annually turned out bright and shining and 
bursting with knowledge upon the community, 
but the number must be great. That they 
make "culture hum" may be rated in the high 
standard of our theatres and literature. 

Ill 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

And the teachers — how many there must 
be! — none with "dandruff on their coat collars," 
for they are all paid huge salaries and can af- 
ford such luxuries as clothes-brushes and trips 
to Europe. I saw some of them lounging on 
the grass in dignified attitudes, some who earn 
as much as poor bank presidents slaving below 
in the heart of the city. 

They impressed me. Little wonder New 
York is the very hub of the universe in the mat- 
ter of culture. Columbia is a vast asset in the 
intellectual Kfe of the city. To be sure, we 
never hear of any extraordinary idea, book, or 
work of art emanating from its cloistered shades, 
but only consider the amount of bright young 
wits it unleashes to do business in "our midst." 

Pragmatic ! Why shouldn't it be pragmatic ? 
Business men, not poets or symmetrical char- 
acters, is the modern need, and this university 
is prime in its manufactory of practical youth. 

For the girls I can't say as much. Barnard 
has its statistics. The specimens I saw were ad- 
mirably ambitious, plain, and preoccupied with 
their studies. 

You don't saunter at Columbia; there is too 
much intellectual ozone in the air, even on hot 
days. The spick-and-span condition of the col- 
leges and their approaches finally gets on your 
nerves and you escape either to Morningside 
Drive or over to Claremont. 

In and around Morningside may be the com- 
ing new "Fifth Avenue." The old can't long 

112 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

resist the attacks of the commercial philistines. 
Why shouldn't this part of the town be the 
home of our ''aristocracy"? There is space, 
commanding views, the air is pure, and there is 
the absence of the crowd. Spaciousness is the 
key-note. 

From the top terrace of Morningside Park the 
scene is fascinating — a tremendous city lies 
spread below you. Its chief quality is its va- 
riety (and gas reservoirs). Now, from River- 
side Drive the landscape is monistic — if I dare 
employ such a term; from Morningside it is 
pluralistic. The perspective of Broadway — 
up here of stately width — with the Subway 
cars emerging into the sunlight is very attrac- 
tive. You have the feeling that another New 
York could be housed on these heights; and 
will be — the march upward is unmistakable. 

I crossed through One Hundred and Twenty- 
second Street and reached the Drive, near 
Grant's Tomb. At Claremont I again saw the 
tomb of the "amiable child" and again nearly 
wept at the thought of this, the last amiable 
child, dying too soon. Since then he has had 
no successors in our city. 

I always admire the far-away Tudor-like tow- 
ers of the College of the City of New York, dark 
field stone and white terra-cotta, and under 
their shadow there are pleasant walks. The 
unfinished Cathedral of St. John the Divine is 
imposing at a distance, and Fordham College 
is attractive because of its leafy surroundings. 

113 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

As for the New York University, thereby 
hangs a tale. I had seen the Hall of Fame from 
the Harlem River and found other view-points, 
and I determined to visit the place, a daring 
enough proposition for a New Yorker. 

I made tentative inquiries, as I wished to 
avoid notoriety — the mere notion of a native 
visiting the Hall of Fame might lead to inter- 
national complications. A Subway guard, after 
consulting the map of his memory, counselled 
me to take the Broadway train and ahght at 
One Hundred and Eighty-first Street. This I 
did on the hottest day of August. Then a news- 
man told me to catch the University Avenue car. 

I did so, my wonderment momentarily in- 
creasing. I knew I wasn't quite in Albany or 
Poughkeepsie, for I saw the legend: ''Amsterdam 
Avenue" when I came out of the Subway ''lift" 
(it is as deep at One Hundred and Eighty-first 
Street as in the London Underground). But 
University Avenue and the various viaducts, the 
glorious sweep of the valleys and hills — the 
coolness, the purity of the air. Where was I? 
Was it Sunium's Heights? The conductor of 
the swift trolley-car told me the neighbourhood 
was known as "Kike's Peak." He said this 
soberly and I could see he meant no offense : he 
but recorded a simple fact, so I told him in 
return that God was ever good to the Irish and 
to his own. 

After that diplomatic stroke we got on fa- 
mously, for he was Irish himself. 

114 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

I was dropped at the Hall of Fame terrace 
about ten minutes of a too short ride from 
Amsterdam Avenue. Everywhere open coun- 
try, with avenues of comfortable houses, man- 
sions, and cottages. The stroll up a quickly 
ascending hill was reassuring. 

The college buildings came into view. One, 
with a cupola, I recognised as the Hall of Fame 
— as I had supposed, but it was the Hbrary with 
its large rotunda and excellent appointments. 
I asked a man who was operating a lawn-mower 
the whereabouts of the hall. *' There !" he said, 
indicating a colonnade that wound about the 
college halls and faced the Harlem River. A 
handsome, ornamental granite loggia led me 
from one end of the terrace to the other. 

There is a museum where there are portraits 
and other memorials. I didn't visit it. It was 
the bronze tablets that interested me. Only two 
portrait busts were to be seen. All the names 
of the celebrities are not yet in bronze. I found 
Longfellow, but not Poe; then it occurred to 
me that perhaps his name would never figure 
among the mediocrities of the hall; perhaps also 
pious prohibitionists had headed off the inclu- 
sion of the name of a notorious drunkard, and 
thus evaded a painful scandal. 

I was further convinced when I discovered in 
the Women's Hall the name of a temperance 
advocate. What a charming idea! By sheer 
negation you may become famous, while Poe, 
poet and ''alcohohc," might prove the contrary, 

115 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

and thus be a dangerous precedent. Poor Poe ! 
Far better is he in his last resting-place at Balti- 
more. I know I slightly annoyed an attendant 
in the library by asking foolish questions. How- 
ever, if you wish to secure a niche in the Hall of 
Fame call early and register with your urn. 
The only disqualification is the possession of 
genius, and as that is a rare quality in any land 
we have all a chance for immortality. How the 
celestial convicts in heaven, as they execute their 
matutinal rhythmic lock-step, must envy their 
neighbours who happen to be in the Hall of Fame. 
A mounted policeman showed me the homeward 
route. But of all the prospects that from the 
colonnade of the New York University is the 
most arresting. Even the chimneys of an elec- 
tric-light plant can't quite spoil the view. Why 
more people don't make this pilgrimage instead 
of crowding the dirty beaches at Coney Island 
must be set down to perversity. There are 
no peanuts on this "Pike's Peak" of the Brain 
of New York. 

II 

When I first made known my plan I was 
scoffed at, then commiserated, and finally ad- 
mired for my audacity. Never, I was warned, 
would I survive the shock. But I persisted. 
I had seen the basement of a department store 
from the Subway and the outside of another in 
Brooklyn, why shouldn't I venture within? 
Once I attended a suffrage meeting and I still 

ii6 



I 



BR.\IN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

live. Why is a bargain day at a department 
store more dangerous to a man? Besides, I 
had read Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames, and 
could reality be more gigantic than that par- 
ticular fiction? In Berlin a visit to Wertheim's, 
on the Leipzigerstrasse, hadn't daunted me, nor 
the stores of Tietz, nor had the Grands Magasins 
du Louvre or Au Printemps in Paris ruffled me ; 
indeed, I found some of these estabhshments 
diverting though disappointing, after their Amer- 
ican rivals. 

In London, Selfridge's, Peter Robinson's, 
Snelgrove's, or any of the other smart shops 
in Regent or Oxford Streets did not convince 
me that imitation is always the sincerest form 
of flattery. Certainly the London big stores 
are modelled after ours, and their imitation is 
far from the original. I am not boasting, only 
stating a hard fact known to every New York 
woman who shops abroad. 

But could I stand a bargain day in New York? 
That was the rub. After praying to escape 
battle, murder, and sudden death and inspect- 
ing my life-insurance pohcy I placed myself in 
the custody of one who knew the ropes, and, 
closing my eyes, entered one of the biggest. I 
was at once whirled to the top of the palace and 
shown a spotless kitchen. I saw people eating 
in large, airy dining-rooms, from the balconies 
and windows of which the city might be en- 
joyed. The quality of the cooking amazed me, 
but not as much as the tariff. That's why men 

117 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

were present. A man dearly loves a *' bargain" 
luncheon. I dived down to the cellar in an ex- 
press elevator and inspected acres of things. 
Each floor I repeated the same experience. I 
thought of the once-celebrated French conjurer 
and prestidigitator, Robert Houdin, the first 
to apply electricity to clocks, the clever magician 
who invented "second sight." 

I remembered how he had, in company with 
his son, his ''accomplice," so trained his eye 
and faculty of attention that, after passing a 
shop-window heaped up with a hundred articles 
he could remember them all and write down the 
list for verification. I wondered if his shrewd 
and embracing vision could have captured the 
distracting number of objects on a single floor 
here. In a multicoloured dream I wandered 
through a maze of matter, labyrinths of glitter- 
ing shapes. As in a nightmare I saw carpets 
that courteously saluted me and grand pianos 
in company with tin pails that gossiped to- 
gether. 

Haughty damsels regarded me icily. ^' Going 
up ! " became a Leitmotiv at every landing. With 
admiration I registered the memory of the 
coloured gentlemen who manipulated the ele- 
vators. Ladies, hot, cool, fat, and slender, en- 
tered at every stop. They didn't seem dan- 
gerous. I passed vast rooms all white, or red, 
in a mysterious half-light. I looked the other 
way when we encountered oceans of lingerie. 

Finally, a slight hubbub told me that we were 

ii8 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

near the seat of war. Yet everybody stood. 
Seats, an army of them ! I saw a mass of fe- 
males in an inextricable tangle, and I thought 
of the Stock Exchange. Nothing was different 
except the absence of shouting. 

But in lieu thereof a serried battalion of de- 
termined feminine warriors swept the bastions, 
and the enemy was theirs. The only wounded, 
strange to say, was a thin, tall floor-walker. He 
limped away in the direction of the wholesale 
perfume department. 

I timidly asked what was the booty of war, 
and promptly received a snub: "Didn't you 
read this morning that gimp was marked down 
one-half?" Bon Dieu! What is gimp, and 
why should it be "marked down"? ''What 
songs the sirens sing I" once wrote Sir Thomas 
Browne. 

Elsewhere we experienced no bargain rushes, 
only plain bargains without battle. The base- 
ment positively intimidated me. People really 
go to these shops unafraid and unarmed. Think 
of the miles and miles of material spread before 
you ! Think of the tax on eyes and legs involved 
in a day's shopping 1 Yet women, day after day, 
thus put in their time walking and bargaining 
and staring. On Sundays they devour the ad- 
vertising pages of the newspapers in search of 
the particular article they long to procure at a 
bargain. Little surprise that we are a nation 
of ideaHsts when womankind "uplifts" us 
through the subtle "marking down" of values. 

119 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

I traversed, not without grumbling — the 
pace was beginning to tell — such stores as I 
had read about. Arriving at the most palatial 
rather fagged but still determined, I found there 
an air of classic restraint. The open centre to 
the roof is refreshing after some oppressive ceil- 
ings I had passed under. 

Nowhere on the globe are there shops like 
ours. If people say Paris or London or Berlin, 
simply reply — New York ! You may buy any- 
thing from an elephant skin to a needle. But 
so lacking in the ''bargain" sense are men that 
when I finally escaped, about five o'clock, to the 
park I found that I had not bought a penny's 
worth except some luncheon and an ice. 

In other words, I was an impostor. But there 
are thousands such, chiefly women, who pass 
the day agreeably in pricing goods they never 
purchase. It is their substitute for alcohol, and 
a less dangerous one. (Ahem !) As I watched 
some who really bought after much chaffering 
for the sake of chaffering, I recalled Rabelais's 
description of a dog with a marrow-bone: ''If 
you have seen him you might have remarked 
with what devotion and circumspection he 
watches and wards it; with what care he keeps 
it; how fervently he holds it; how prudently 
he gobbets it; with what affection he breaks it; 
with diHgence he sucks it." Bargain day is a 
marrow-bone sweet to woman; sweeter even 
than the Votiform Appendix. 



1 20 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

III 

When I began this series of studies devoted 
to intimate New York I had no intention of 
describing the town at large, only the corners 
that appealed to me; but as you are carried 
against your will in a human maelstrom, so I 
find myself far from my original plan. 

I have, for myself, rediscovered New York. 
Its vastness almost appals. No fear of over- 
populating, if the East Side congestion could be 
tapped. There is room enough for milhons 
north of us, and without crossing the rivers. 

On the libraries I shan't dwell. They are at 
your elbow if you choose to visit them. I still 
regret the old Lenox Library, possibly because 
of its position. Certainly no structure will 
duplicate its dignity and massiveness. With 
the New York Library I am not yet well ac- 
quainted. I have dropped in to some excellent 
exhibitions of Frank Weitenkampf, curator of 
the print department, but I feel strange in the 
library proper, possibly because I miss the 
homely atmosphere of the Astor Library. 

Of the clubs and hospitals there is naught to 
be said here, and it would be superfluous to find 
fault with the ugly Metropolitan Opera House 
when so much beautiful music is made within; 
or with the MetropoHtan Museum of Art, so 
beautiful without. 

I wonder who would read literature in our pub- 
lic libraries or visit the Metropolitan Museum 

121 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

of Art if there was no East Side ! Isn't it odd 
that these *' foreigners" are in the majority 
among the visitors of our art institution in Cen- 
tral Park ? To be sm^e, there are warmer places 
in town on a June Sunday afternoon. This fact 
is appreciated by a large number of folk hailing 
from the East Side. You meet them there any 
time after the dinner-hour — German mode — 
and in any of the side streets from Sixtieth to One 
Hundredth, starting from Avenue A. They wear 
holiday clothes, and they beam with satisfaction. 
A treat is ahead of them. To wander in the cool 
twilight of the lower galleries; to flirt in the face 
of the Egyptian mummies; to giggle and gossip 
among the monster plaster casts; to stare at the 
marbles or sit placidly before bright-coloured 
pictures — what joy for the '^uncultured " classes 
of the far East Side ! You see them streaming 
up Fifth Avenue. Their faces are shiny. It is 
hot. Fathers and mothers with families, some- 
times numbering eight or ten — ask the door- 
keepers, who groan and growl as the entire 
''mishpogah" attempt to push through the turn- 
stile at the same moment — Russians, Italians, 
Poles, Hungarians, Bohemians, Serbs, Croats, 
Greeks, Roumanians — Hebrews many of them 
— file by and ramble about, content to be re- 
minded of some European or semi-Asiatic city, 
where, on their native heath, they once looked 
at pictures with the same appreciation. 

A Walt Whitman catalogue alone could sum 
up the ethnical and kaleidoscopic variety of the 

122 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

mob that besieges the museum gate on summer 
Sunday afternoons. Yet a decorous, on occa- 
sion even a reverent, crowd, especially before 
sacred subjects, and a mob startlingly garbed. 
The children prefer the ground floor. It is of 
stone and cooler, there are ''queerer" things 
to be seen than up-stairs. Sleighs shaped like 
boats, and dead men and women in marble on 
tombs, and churches, too; above all, Notre- 
Dame and the Pantheon. How dehghtful would 
it be if there were such toys at home. How the 
babies would crawl in and out of the big doors ! 
Perhaps they might make a big bonfire if straw 
and matches could be gathered ! The mummies 
— what a jolly set of ugly mugs in painted, 
canoe-like coverings ! What a glorious ride on 
that Colleoni horse, whose feet must wear in- 
visible seven-league boots, so magnificent the 
possibility of their stride ! The George Grey 
Barnard group always elicits puzzled remarks; 
a wresthng-match, with the under man down 
and out for ever, is the usual verdict. 

But before Borglum's Mares of Diomedes 
there are no doubts expressed. ''A good run 
for your money!" says a sporty youth, with 
hair plastered on forehead. His girl nods. It 
is an object-lesson in the psychology of sex to 
watch the procession passing Makart's monster 
panel, with its riot of women in dazzling nudity. 
The girls always gaze unaffectedly at the explo- 
sive colour and large-limbed creatures. Their 
masculine escorts look carefully in the opposite 

123 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

direction. Why? It may not be amiss to 
state that the museum authorities displayed 
admirable judgment in their refusal to fig-leaf 
modern statuary. At the Louvre, at the Vat- 
ican, at a dozen other galleries in Europe, this 
needlessly offensive custom prevails. New York, 
with all its infernal prudery and prurience, has 
not thus defaced Rodin's superb bronze, I'Age 
d'Airain. It is Rodin at his best; nervous the 
touch, sinewy the figure, the planes of which 
melt into the ambient atmosphere no matter 
from which point you approach. It is as good, if 
not better, than the original at the Luxembourg. 
Its stark power, however, carries no message for 
the Sunday guests, though you note an occa- 
sional look of awe ; but to the multitude it is one 
naked man the more; therefore to be warily 
circled. 

What charm lurks in the bronzes by Jules 
Dalou! Mother's Love is a centre of attrac- 
tion. As for the lace collections — they are 
ever difiicult to reach, because of the women. 
The merits of Manet, Monet, and Whistler may 
be left to critical mankind; but every woman 
who enters the building, whether she wears a 
shawl on her head or rides there in a motor-car, 
is an authority on lace. Go and judge for your- 
self. Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt has donated a 
"creation" in Brussels applique, once the prop- 
erty of Isabella, late Queen of Spain (a lace- 
like lady in her diaphanous day). As it is a 
baptism dress with veil, the women are literally 

124 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

mad over it. But let us fight our way up-stairs. 
On the main staircase we stumbled over a 
family party comfortably settled for an im- 
promptu luncheon; the cold eggs were being 
tapped when an attendant, on the verge of a 
righteous apoplexy, came to the rescue, and 
wails of indignation arose from the lungs of six 
hungry children. ''Art be hanged!" is what 
the father muttered in Czech, as he piloted his 
crew to the green and more hospitable park. 
The museum men have their troubles. 

The Morgan collection is a Mecca for the ma- 
jority. They make for these galleries — as a 
rule the hottest in the museum — with a una- 
nimity that spells for the curious the colossal 
attraction in the name of J. Pierpont Morgan. 
This loan collection includes some beautiful 
pictures, but not the best in the museum. How- 
ever, the crowds flock to Georgiana, Duchess 
of Devonshire, because of her legend as well as 
her hat. The name of Gainsborough you hear 
last. A favourite is Miss Farren, by Lawrence. 
The Raphael is not a big drawing card. It 
leaves the multitude untouched — seemingly; 
I can only judge by appearances. Nor are the 
Hobbema or the Van Dycks much admired; but 
Reynolds — Lady Betty and Her Children — 
the Greuze, the Hoppner, and other canvases 
of the ilk never miss an audience. Subject, not 
art, is the lodestone. It was ever thus, and ever 
will be, let critics scold as they may. A little 
girl playing with a kitten would swerve the 

125 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

attention of the public from such a master- 
piece as The Maids of Honor, by Velasquez. 
Naturally, the furniture and porcelains in 
this section come in for their due share of 
homage. 

Though we have no Salon Carre, no Tribuna, 
in the museum, there is a certain gallery, with 
its priceless works of art, that would be a par- 
adise to live in. With the two small Rodins 
for company regard the old lady of Frans Hals 
and her sober-faced husband. There in the 
Rembrandt Sibyl, or the well-fed gentleman wear- 
ing a turban, you may see the self-portrait of 
Rembrandt. The Goya is flauntingly brilHant 
in comparison. But it is rather disconcerting 
to observe the blank air of non-recognition with 
which the collection in this gallery is observed. 
The same is the case with the new Vincent Van 
Gogh, or the wonderful sketch by Manet of a 
Montmartre funeral. The mob presses through 
to the adjoining room, there to admire pink sun- 
sets, silly flower girls, glazed marines — a con- 
glomeration of the most indigestible pictures in 
the building. It is the subject that attracts the 
throngs. All the afternoon you hear the babble, 
and if you are a linguist you may remark the 
similarity of the questions and exclamations be- 
fore the Winslow Homer canvas, which dra- 
matically depicts a sea scene: ''Oh, my! Look 
at the black man ! He's dead. No, he isn't, 
but he soon expects to be swallowed up by 
those sharks. What sharks? Isn't he fishing? 

126 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

There's his line, that coloured rope. Unsinn ! 
It's a devil-fish, see it wriggle its eight arms ! 
Yes, eight, just count 'em. There's a water- 
spout ! The ship ! the ship ! Ain't the water 
wet and green?" 

About a half dozen keepers succumb of a Sun- 
day in answering the questions put to them. 
No wonder. Homer has painted better pictures 
than this framed melodrama of piratical hor- 
rors, but none so popular. The Renoir group 
is comparatively neglected, the Manets abso- 
lutely neglected, with the possible exception of 
the Boy with a Sword. Possibly the rich har- 
monies of the Renoir- Charpen tier family por- 
trait do not appeal. I saw several persons 
study the httle girl sitting on the large dog, but 
whether it is the child is not pretty enough — 
as a matter of fact, she is adorable — or because 
the bluish tone distracts, only a shrug of the 
shoulder happened before this work. It prob- 
ably denotes suspended opinion; no such shrugs 
occur in the face of the two Claude Monets, 
which hang hard by — frank grinning is often 
accompanied by laughter. The vivid beach 
scene with the choppy waves and lovely sky are 
too much for many. Because it evokes nature 
this marine offends or tickles the risible rib. 
If the water had been pink, the sand inky, and 
the sky full of woolen clouds, and the human 
figures carved out — oh ! what cries of amaze- 
ment and joy. Meissonier ! That's the chap 
for us. His soldiers, his horses (hair, hoof, hide), 

127 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

you can see them all — count the hairs — clear 
as glass or brass. Besides, he tells a story. 

So does Detaille. \Vhat good is that ugly 
guitarist of Edouard Manet ? Why, he looks hke 
a little old Spaniard in Houston Street who 
plunks out Iberian melodies for you, and is glad 
to earn a copper. That's the trouble. He is too 
Hfelike, this Manet, even for the Academy Sig- 
nori — extremes meet, the East Side and learned 
academicians. His silhouette may be as mas- 
terful as if executed by Goya; his eyes, they 
burn with a hard fire; and look at his hat, his 
costume — no ! all this is mere imitation. The 
proletarians are idealists, as are our academic 
painters. They all want to dream; they long 
for the unreal; their ice-cream is pink of hue. 
They sigh for Marble Halls by Lord Leighton 
and Alma-Tadema. Life is dull, drab, cruel — 
at times, vile; in art let us get away from life as 
far as possible ! Thus do Laura Jean Libbey, 
Marie CorelH, Hall Caine, and the East Side 
touch hands with our immortal academy. A 
little touch of pink paint makes all the world kin. 

With or without his note-book, a likely re- 
porter could glean columns of Sunday after- 
noon stories at the museum. I notice that the 
"popular" guide, in the guise of a young lady, 
has already begun. Students of character after 
*' human interest" anecdotes, and sociological 
sleuths, would be embarrassed by the richness 
of the soil. There are girls enough there on 
Sundays to people our barren moon; they are, 

128 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

for the major part, broad of girth, squat of figure, 
bright-eyed, and often possess a pretty wit. 
Said one, before that too voluptuous Cabanel, 
The Birth of Venus (a capital soap advertise- 
ment): ''Sadie, what's she called?" ''The Bath 
of Venus," replied the other. No one smiled, for 
the improvised title fitted. Whistler's Falling 
Rocket is not popular. ''It's too dark to see 
the sparks," said a man who had sneered the 
Monets off the map of his acquaintance. But 
one painter's — I've forgotten his name — pic- 
ture of the forging of a shaft, with its glow of 
molten metal, is a perpetual object of interest. 

No one stops in front of the portrait of a 
Spanish Lady, by Mariano Fortuny. Why not 
replace it by an Eastman Johnson "coon" sub- 
ject ? There's a popular idea for you ! The 
Vanderbilt gallery is always crowded; the va- 
riety of themes and its painters make it beloved. 
Nor should the supercilious critic wave inef- 
fectual flags of protest. Deeply implanted in 
the human consciousness there is a craving for 
the tale simply told. The Vanderbilt gallery 
suppKes many examples. The Millets, Dau- 
bignys, Meissoniers, De Neuvilles, Detailles, 
Benjamin Constant, and the Oriental subjects 
of Fromentin, Gerome, Decamps, and others 
are always the centre for admiring visitors. 
And who shall gainsay their taste? This mid- 
century art was once the shibboleth of our 
fathers, to whom misty impressionism, angular 
cubism, and imbecile futurism was, and is, a 

129 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

riddle and an eyesore. Take them, by and 
large, the East Side crowds that fill the Metro- 
politan Museum on Sunday afternoons are as 
excellent judges as the visitors on pay-days. 
At least they know what they dislike. 

A more gracious form of public benefaction 
is hardly conceivable than the Benjamin Altman 
donation of art treasures to the Metropolitan 
Museum. Mr. Altman loved pictures and porce- 
lains and sculptures, and, while not a man with 
a fixed idea or belief in any one school, still he 
knew what he wanted and procured it. His 
picture-gallery was not the result of long years 
of meditation and collecting, though his china 
was. He had certain preferences, notably the 
quaint old Dutch school, some Flemish prim- 
itives, and the noble Spaniard, Velasquez. Yet 
that did not prevent him from admiring the 
Italian primitives, and, while his magnificent 
gift to the museum is in no sense a representa- 
tive gathering of any particular school, never- 
theless it reveals the catholic tastes of its donor. 
But we must guard against the prevalent opin- 
ion that the Altman collection is faultless, is 
above criticism; indiscriminate admiration nat- 
urally enough expressed just now in the first 
flush of gratitude at the magnitude of the gift 
may prove a stumbling-block to both student 
and amateur; in a word, all the pictures and 
art objects in this collection are not master- 
pieces. Far from it. There are private col- 
lections in America that excel at every point, 

130 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

quality and quantity, the Altman; furthermore, 
there is bound to be a slump in critical values 
if the key is pitched too high at the outset. 
Consider the case of the Morgan collection and 
the now openly expressed disappointment of con- 
noisseurs who had expected something fault- 
less, whereas, setting aside the Raphael, the 
Fragonards, and the Gainsborough Duchess, 
there are some pessimistic people who assert 
that the gem of the collection in the museum is 
the portrait of a little Dutch baby, and that by 
an unknown master, for masterly it is. 

Therefore, it is well to guard against uncritical 
enthusiasm. All Rembrandts are not master- 
pieces — especially when his pupils painted 
them; and Frans Hals painted unequally, as the 
Altman examples prove up to the hilt. Nor 
must the rather reckless use of such sacred names 
as Giorgione and Titian be accepted without pro- 
test. But the Rembrandt Gallery is a hand- 
some one, a baker's dozen of the masters, and, 
while it cannot be compared en masse with the 
Cassel Gallery assemblage — what gallery can 
outside of the Rijks Museum ? — the Altman 
Rembrandts are his trump-cards. Several, at 
least, are masterpieces; all are of interest, 
though not equal in artistic merit. The Old 
Woman Cutting Her Nails is a magisterial, 
almost monumental, work, and is already the 
lodestone for visitors. Yet, after two or three 
visits it ceased to make the profound appeal it 
should have done, because it is obviously not 

131 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

Rembrandt at his mightiest. For one thing, 
the figure is overmodelled ; the bulk is sculp- 
tural rather than pictorial ; there is more than a 
suggestion of pose, of a self-consciousness that 
robs the composition of pristine simplicity, of 
the effortless art of which Rembrandt knew so 
well the secret. Dramatic is this old woman 
with the untrimmed nails, but she is also out of, 
and not in, the frame — like an operatic prima- 
donna she faces the footlights ready for her 
exalted aria. Of the paint quality there is no 
doubt — it is beautiful in its easy sweep and fat 
richness. The imagination of the Seer of Am- 
sterdam is greatly daring, and the head is sibyl- 
line, but not altogether in the clear-obscure of 
the painter. Simplicity is the quality least in 
evidence. If this sounds like hypercriticism, 
please remember I've lived with the Rembrandts 
of the Louvre, National Gallery, at Cassel, and 
in Holland. Still, what a piece of luck for Mr. 
Altman to have secured this rare specimen, for 
it is unlike any Rembrandt I've ever seen in its 
rhetorical quality. From the sombre heart of 
darkness the master plucked mystery, and, 
except in his etchings — after all, the man at 
his best — he seldom touches earth with his 
august feet; touches reality, as did, say, Vermeer. 
But this old woman like her neighbour, also 
an old lady, is far from being the Elizabeth Bas 
of the Rijks. More characteristic is the Toilet 
of Bathsheba, on another wall. This lovely 
dream in gloom and old gold I studied for years 

132 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

in the back room of Count Steengracht's man- 
sion on the Vyverberg, at The Hague. How 
many visitors to that fascinating Dutch city 
have admired this woman who tempted the royal 
psalmodist ! She is not subtle or comely as are 
the Titian women, but she is compelling enough, 
and she is placed in an enchanting glow which 
Rembrandt alone could evoke. For me, Bath- 
sheba is the Rembrandt of the Altman collec- 
tion, and after the first imperious pull of The 
Old Woman Cutting Her Nails relaxes, you will 
find yourself returning to the magnetic portrait 
of the unfaithful wife, which has the true vis- 
ionary aspect of Rembrandt. Why the Rijks 
Museum authorities allowed this masterpiece to 
escape may be set down to the fact that too 
much money had been spent on the new Ver- 
meers from the Six collections. And a Vermeer 
is always worth a dozen Rembrandts on the 
sheer score of rarity. 

The Lady with a Pink is attractive, as is the 
portrait of The Auctioneer. The Pilate did 
not intrigue me; it seems rather vague or empty. 
The Man with a Magnifying Glass is psycho- 
logically strong. The others are more or less 
negligible. Hendrickje Stoffels is distinctly in- 
ferior to the portraits of the same lady in the 
Louvre and the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin. 
The so-called Little Masters were a disappoint- 
ment, the Vermeer — Holland's master colourist 
— being an early effort, the so-called Drunken 
Servant Asleep, said to be from the historical 

^33 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

sale of 1696; though Burger-Thore believes Mr. 
Widener's picture with the same name, but dif- 
ferently treated, is the original of that sale. 
Certainly it is better painted than the Altman 
example, which latter is a rather dull, heavy per- 
formance — its edges are too soft for the mas- 
ter — lacking the magic atmosphere, spacing, 
and exquisite touch of Vermeer. Some of the 
still-life shows his touch, and there are passages 
of paint in the rug that are superb; the wall, too, 
is very swell; but, as a Vermeer, this does not 
rank with Mr. Widener's Woman Weighing 
Pearls, Mrs. Gardner's, Mr. Frick's, or Mr. J. 
G. Johnson's, in Philadelphia. Go, after study- 
ing it, into the Marquand room at the Metro- 
politan Museum, and look at the thrice-lovely 
girl with the pitcher, sometimes called The Girl 
Opening the Casement. That is beautiful Ver- 
meer, with its blue, yellow, and silvery-grey 
tonalities, much more so than the Morgan Ver- 
meer, which hangs hard by. I confess that the 
De Hooch, Nicholas Maes, the Gerard Dou, the 
Terburg (or Terborch) did not interest me; like 
the three Frans H.alses, they are mediocre. The 
Wheatfields, by Jacob Van Ruisdael, is fine and 
better than the Hobbema. Of the three ex- 
amples by Frans Hals, two of them are in his 
bacchanalian, bombastic vein — a Jan Steen 
vein. I recall The Merry Company from the 
Hudson-Fulton Exhibition. Its pattern is in- 
genious, its colour scheme hot and flamboyant. 
None of the three display the virtuoso brush 

134 



BR.\IN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

work of the brilliant Dutchman. I like better 
the Marquand Halses, not to mention the Rem- 
brandts; but not the so-called Hille Bobbe, or 
The Smoker, which are both unhappy attribu- 
tions; the original of Hille is in the Kaiser 
Friedrich Museum, Berlin. It wouldn't sur- 
prise me to learn that several of these Halses 
are by Dirk, not Frans. 

The Christ of Velasquez is, as De Beruete 
relates, an early work. It is hot and heavy in 
colour, as heavy as Caravaggio. A Velasquez 
for the student of liis various manners it is, but 
not very convincing. The Phihp IV is a pale, 
feeble school piece, possibly by his son-in-law, 
Mazo. At the Prado, and in the National Gal- 
lery, the real Philip IV may be seen ; not here — • 
above all, not in the Boston Museum, where the 
Philip might be a replica of the Altman, or 
t'other way about. The two Van Dycks are 
nice, though hardly significant; nor by the same 
token is the Titian. Giorgione and Vermeer are 
such rare birds that it is arrant blasphemy to 
place their names in a catalogue unless the pic- 
ture ascribed to either of them is unmistakable. 
Mr. Berenson believes this Altman portrait to 
be an unquestionable Giorgione, and there is no 
disputing Berenson. Nor Bode, either. But 
even if it is a Giorgione, does that say much for 
this particular canvas? It is the Venetian of 
his period, and exhales a certain charm, as do 
many Venetian artists of Big George of Castel- 
franco's days. 

^3S 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

A few years ago I happened to be in Hamburg, 
and reading the advertisement of Consul Weber's 
pictures, I visited his house, and there found a 
few good pictures, also a profusion of junk and 
wholly worthless attributions. A small Rem- 
brandt, the head of a boy, was capital, and at 
the sale later eagerly snapped up. Down on 
the dismal cellar-like first floor were about a 
half acre of Flemish, German, and Italian prim- 
itives. Among them The Holy Family, by 
Andrea Mantegna, which Mr. Altman was 
happy in capturing. It is the treasure of his 
Italian section, a work of exceeding charm and 
nobility. Mantegna is not often encountered 
in European galleries, and now artistic Europe 
may visit our museum to see this Mantegna. I 
wish I could become as enthusiastic over the 
Memlings — of which one at least betrays Ger- 
man origin (all these Memlings are doubtful), 
or the Albrecht Diirer — once known as Our 
Lady of the Gumboil, and full of poisonously acid 
paint; or over the Botticelli (?), or Memhng's 
Betrothal. Whosoever has tarried in Bruges will 
not long delay before this well-executed com- 
position, devoid though it be of spiritual atmos- 
phere. The Diereck Bouts is excellent, and the 
Cosma Tura very attractive, attribution correct 
or not. That's precisely the verdict that may be 
passed on the majority of the Altman collection. 
Many of its pictures are beautiful without their 
resounding names. So why worry over precision 
in attribution? What could be lovelier than 

136 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

the Gerard David, The Christ of the Miniature 
(in case B)? One must go to Bruges to better 
it. The Mainardi, the Barend Von Orley, the 
Lippi (?), the Fra AngeHco (?), the Verrocchio 
(?) are all of moment, aside from their ascrip- 
tions. The portrait of a Lady by Bartolommeo 
Montagna is a specimen of Venetian art that, 
notwithstanding its modest position, is engaging. 
The Hans Maler I've seen elsewhere; like the 
Holbeins, it is characteristic. The latter are 
as hard as nails, with wiry silhouettes. The 
Francia and Messina portraits are vital. 

The porcelains, enamels, furniture, tapestries, 
and miscellaneous art objects would take a year 
to describe. The sculpture is generally impres- 
sive. There is the Houdon Bather, a splendid 
marble, full of elusive, slippery modelling, with 
enough accents to redeem the figure from sus- 
picion of prettiness. The Clodion terra-cotta 
was formerly entitled The Triumph of Pan, in- 
stead of the conventional Intoxication of Wine. 
(I remember it at the Doucet collection sale in 
Paris.) It represents in plastic perfection the 
culmination of ecstasy, the very apotheosis of 
passion, withal, in terms of idealised art. The 
facture is marvellous. Only think of such a 
gathering of names as Mina da Fiesole, Germain 
Pilon, Verrocchio (?), Sansovino, Rossellino, 
Benedetto da Majano, Luca della Robbia, John 
of Bologna, Alessandro Vittoria, and Donatello. 
I am not sure but that when the authoritative 
critical appraisement of the Altman collection is 

137 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

finally made, his sculptures will rank the rest. 
The Donatello Madonna, the Mino Head of St. 
John — in the round and the youthful charm of 
which is irresistible — the Sansovino Charity, 
and the Madonna of Robbia, not forgetting 
the delicious relief of the Madonna and Child 
of Rossellino, these, with Pigalle's Mercury 
and the Houdon and Clodion examples linger 
longer in my memory than the pictures — the 
provenance of which need concern us less 
than the consideration of their intrinsic artistic 
merit. 

If you alight at the One Hundred and Fifty- 
seventh Street Subway station, west side, and 
walk down a block you will come upon a struc- 
ture of Indiana limestone, of an architectural 
type that is a happy compromise of classic and 
romantic. It is not more than one hundred feet 
in length, and in depth seventy feet. The 
building stands in One Hundred and Fifty-sixth 
Street, west of Broadway, in Audubon Park; air 
and sunshine have plenty of space to play about 
its severe and graceful lines. It is the Hispanic 
Museum. Mr. Archer M. Huntington, a pro- 
found student of Spanish archaeology, literature, 
and art, has brought together an extraordinary 
collection of antiques, manuscripts, marbles, 
bronzes, books, Hispano-Moresque ware, medals, 
coins, letters. In Europe — Madrid for example 
— this house beautiful would be an objective 
shrine for passionate pilgrims. New York is so 

138 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

interested in dancing that it has little time to 
visit the Hispanic Museum unless a sensation is 
provided such as the impressionistic pictures of 
SoroUa. 

A tiled space after you have entered by the 
big iron gates on the granite stairs gives an im- 
posing perspective. The attention is first caught 
by two gigantic repousse bronze doors from 
Egypt, of the fourteenth century. They were 
found by Mr. Huntington at Cairo, and were 
formerly the wings of a door on the mosque of 
the Mameluke Sultan, Barkuf, whose name is 
inscribed in Arabic. Tiles and mosaics on the 
walls and halls evoke dreams of the Alhambra, 
of Spain when it was most beautiful — Moorish 
Spain. If one may dare say it, the interior of 
the museum is of a cosy magnificence. It is not 
large, nor yet is it cramped. The spacing and 
arrangement of the various objects of art have 
been planned by a master hand. You have a 
sense of intimacy. You wish to linger, to "losii 
and invite your soul" under that glassed patio, 
from which you may peep over into the read- 
ing-room with its fifty thousand volumes. A 
small boy in buttons, who is not even half 
Spanish, offers you a leather plaque, upon which 
are inscribed the names of the masters whose 
pictures adorn the walls — some thirty odd. It 
is a moment to rejoice. New York has never 
seen, in a public place, such a gathering of Goyas 
and El Grecos, while the two Velasquezes, won- 
derful examples, are claimed by certain experts 

139 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

to be the only genuine ones in America by the 
great Spaniard. 

One portrait is supposed by those whose judg- 
ment is worthy of credence to be that of a cer- 
tain Cardinal Pamfih, or Pamphili, spoken of 
by Palomino. (What visions of cool bosks and 
sweet meadows are evoked by the old name, the 
Pamphili gardens at Rome !) Velasquez painted 
the heads of many churchly dignitaries while 
in Rome — the Pope and several cardinals. 
His Innocent X in the Doria Palace once seen 
will never vanish from the secret chambers of 
the brain. The present portrait is that of a 
man in the flower of his age. Though wearing 
scarlet cope and biretta he still preserves a youth- 
ful air. He sports, as did many a noble priest 
of those days, a little moustache. His is a sleek 
face. The eyes suggest a shrewd nature, not 
easily fathomed. Its depth and lustre, the solid 
modelling of the head, the planes of the face, to 
assess a few values, are all masterly. The ex- 
pression is both powerful and delicate. The 
figure swims in space. Viewed from the oppo- 
site end of the gallery,you feel as some one aUve 
were looking at you through an aperture framed 
in gold. Vitality, nobility in characterisation, 
and superb paint are displayed in this portrait. 
If Velasquez did not paint it — and such au- 
thorities as the late Sefior de Beruete and Pro- 
fessor Venturi assert that without the peradven- 
ture of a doubt he is its author — then who in 
the name of El Cid was its creator? Certainly 

140 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

a glorious artist. It would be too cruel to com- 
pare it with the alleged Velasquezes I have seen 
here. It has quahty, that indefinable quality, 
like unto the golden, floating tone of a Stradi- 
varius violin (or its richly varnished belly). 

The Granddaughter Portrait by Velasquez 
comes from the collection of the late Edouard 
Kann, of Paris, and is a life-size bust portrait 
of a sweetly grave little girl. Senor Beruete 
believes her to represent the daughter of the 
painter Mazo and his wife Francisca Velasquez, 
therefore a granddaughter of Velasquez. The 
tonalities of the picture are subtly beautiful, 
the modelling mysterious, the expression vital 
and singularly child-like. It is a fitting com- 
panion to the aristocratic cardinal. Of the 
Grecos there is a brilliantly coloured Holy Fam- 
ily; a St. Joseph, said to be the portrait of the 
painter, and a large canvas showing Christ with 
several of his disciples. The most magisterial of 
the El Grecos is the portrait of Cardinal de 
Guevara, from the former Kann collection. A 
notable work. The Goyas are unequal but in- 
teresting. One depicts the horrors of war, and is 
probably a sketch for the picture at the Prado, 
Madrid. We know it through the etched series, 
entitled The Horrors of War, a companion set to 
the Caprichos. Cruel, violent, exuberant, it is 
truly Goyaesque. So is its neighbour, a bucoHc 
bit. The portrait of the Duchess of Alva, 
a large canvas, shows us that coquettish dame 
pointing to her feet, where the artist has 

141 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

scrawled his signature in the dust. It is mod- 
ern in feehng, as modern as Zuloaga, though 
a trifle wooden in the articulation of the wrists 
and ankles. The Duke of Alva (The Bloody 
Duke), is by Antonio Moro — strongly mas- 
culine in feeling. In dull-coloured armour, car- 
rying across his arm a truncheon, this sinister 
nobleman does not behe his fierce reputation. 
What power, what painting ! Note the tactile 
values in that sceptre, not of iron but of wood; 
one has the sense of lesser weight as it reposes 
on the steel-clad left arm — not to mention 
the justness of the rendered texture. General 
Forastero, by Goya, hangs on the same wall, and 
also a man's portrait by Murillo. The general 
effect at the other end of the gallery is brilHant. 
Carrefio de Miranda's Assumption of the Virgin 
hangs in the centre. On either side are two 
Morales, a Valdes Real, and a rich-toned Murillo. 
The Miranda might have been painted yester- 
day, so clear and fresh is the body of its paint. 
On the two long walls, south and north, there 
are portraits by Spanish artists — an excel- 
lent one of Philip IV — and altar-pieces and 
ecclesiastical subjects, Hispano-Moresque lustre 
ware, sacred vessels, gold, silver, precious stones, 
bronzes, door-knockers, iron-work, coins of rare 
value. Moorish, Roman, Carthaginian, and 
Spanish coins may be seen and wondered over, 
a wonderment that finally modulates into the 
theme of the collector's indomitable patience 
and sagacity. Mr. Huntington is an authority 

142 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

on Spanish and Moorish coins. He has written 
a history concerning them. And the collection 
of old books, unique maps, and manuscripts ! 
It will be the work of a lifetime to catalogue 
the riches of this museum, which, excepting the 
British Museum, has no rival. Francis Lathrop 
painted in monochrome the heads that are 
ranged under the galleries; also two capital 
copies of the Velasquez masterpieces in the 
Prado, The Maids of Honor (Las Meninas) and 
The Spinners (Las Hilanderas). The decora- 
tions throughout are warm in tone, the various 
carvings tasteful. Medallions adorn the outer 
walls with appropriate names of great Spanish 
artists and thinkers. Loyola is one, a significant 
indication of the donor's catholicity. Flanking 
the Hispanic Museum is the Numismatist So- 
ciety's home. 

IV 

Of the theatres there is no end. Neverthe- 
less true drama is not yet lodged here. The 
heterogeneous elements that make up our the- 
atre-going public demand amusement of the 
most elementary variety and get what they ask 
for. 

With music the case is different. We have 
an extraordinary conductor, an Italian born, 
and only one orchestra that vies with the Vienna 
Philharmonic Society orchestra; of course, I refer 
to Toscanini and to the band from Boston, the 
Higginson veterans; but there are several capital 

143 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

orchestras in the city and plenty of minor organ- 
isations. America still imports its music and 
music-makers. Thus far our musical genius has 
found fullest expression in the invention or the 
development of mechanical toys, pianos, and 
the like; such as the soulless phonograph with 
its diabolical concatenation of sounds and the 
malignant "records" of famous singers, whose 
voices, because of this sinister ''sea change," 
become colourless, rasping, pinched, metallic, a 
very caricature of the original. Edison is bet- 
ter known now than Beethoven. 

The most characteristic example of American 
music is, thus far, Edward A. MacDowell's 
Indian Suite, and not Antonin Dvorak's so- 
called New World Symphony, which latter, de- 
spite its occasional utilisation of negro tunes, 
is a composition more Bohemian in colour and 
character than American. (Why go to the 
negro for ''American" melody: he is not an 
aboriginal, the Indian is; besides, the negro in 
America, be it understood, never created native 
music. And has the so-called "African" music 
exerted anything but a debasing influence ?) 
If you insist on the African element then Stephen 
Foster and Louis Moreau Gottschalk are the 
greatest American composers, for both invented 
"negro" tunes, the latter, so-called Creole music. 

Our greatest American novelist still lives in 
England, and the "great" American novel will 
never be written because art is not a question of 
magnitude, but of intensity. The average con- 

144 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

ception of the '^ great" American novel is a 
bundle of dialects. But the human soul has 
no dialect. 

With painting and sculpture the case is 
brighter. We have a native school of land- 
scape, and if our figure-painters do not lead in 
the world's procession our sculptors make a 
showing. New York is full of hideous public 
statuary, as it is full of horrible architecture, but 
the Sherman, Nathan Hale, Farragut, Hunt 
Memorial, Ward's Pilgrim, Browne's Washing- 
ton in Union Square should make us forget the 
Dodge, the Cox, and other attempts. 

I confess that in the Mall of Central Park 
there is a nerve-destroying aggregation. But 
how about the marble abominations of the 
Siegesallee, Berlin ! To every city its municipal 
bad taste. Paris is alone the home of outdoor 
statuary that does not offend the taste. 

On the other hand, some of our churches 
soothe the eye. St. Patrick's Cathedral makes 
perfect Gothic music in moonlight nights, and 
the very bulk of the St. John Cathedral on the 
Heights is imposing. The new St. Thomas, de- 
spite its newness, pleases the eye with its har- 
monious lines, as Trinity does by its age. St. 
Paul's Chapel, Grace Church, old St. Mark's, to 
mention a few classic examples, are show-places. 

If you search for the soul of New York you 
must not go to its market-place, but to its 
churches; therein its still small voice may be 
overheard. Without the roar is mundane. 

145 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

I might have included the newspaper build- 
ings under the caption of ''The Brain of New 
York," but just now there seems to exist such 
a prejudice against "highbrows" that it is more 
prudent not to place ''journalists" in that cate- 
gory. But the newspaper buildings belong to 
the "sights" of the town. Anything more 
architecturally charming than the Herald, 
dwarfed as it is by its giant neighbours, does 
not exist here, and of the Times I once wrote 
— having a vantage-point then in upper Mad- 
ison Avenue: "To enjoy the delicate and mas- 
sive drawing of the Times Building as etched 
against a southern sky — now ardent, now fire- 
tipped, jewelled, or swimming in the bewitching 
breath of a summer's day — one must study it 
from the north. A silhouette in the evening, 
and often Hke a child's church of chalk lighted 
at Christmas, it flushes rosy in the morning, 
and during the afternoon the repercussion of the 
sun waves drowns it in an incandescent haze. 
The fronds of stone ranging below it support 
this bell- tower — for it is of the true Campanile 
order from afar — as if it were an integral part 
of them. It, too, spires northward, where the 
park blooms, an emerald oblong. On its pin- 
nacle the city below wears the precise, mapped- 
out look and checkered image it has from a bal- 
loon, or pinned on a surveyor's chart." 

As to the Stock Exchange, Custom House, 
Clearing House, Sub-Treasury, and Chamber of 
Commerce — their beauties are perennial. 

146 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

Of the little things to be seen in our intimate 
New York I might make a book. Not always 
the wide waterways or vast spaces bring to the 
eye such ravishing impressions as those caught 
at the corner of some alley or through the arch 
of one of the big bridges. There is Baxter 
Street. There is Edgar Street, the shortest 
street in the city. Or there is Dutch Street. 
And there is Fletcher Street. Go find it and see 
the Singer Building from its coign; or Brooklyn 
Bridge from Frankfort Street; or Coenties Slip; 
or that ever delightful part of New Street where 
it ends at Marketfield Street and the Produce 
Exchange. 

There's an intimate corner for you, and an- 
other is just off the narrowest and highest street 
of all (I hope this is so !), Exchange Place, east 
of Broadway. On the hottest days Exchange 
Place seems cooler than the street, as you crane 
your neck to see the slit of blue sky. 

Then, if craving magnificent dimensions, there 
is the Grand Central Station, the largest in the 
world, and the end is not yet. Wonderful as are 
its proportions, the fagade in Forty-second Street 
is disfigured by the Uttle shops beneath; nor does 
it convey the majestic power of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad Station, to my mind the most beautiful 
without of all railway stations and the most 
imposing within. It is a unicum; the Grand 
Central Station a complex of buildings. 

I have seen strange sights. An American flag 
flying from the gilded dome of an East Side 
synagogue ; a man blocking the way in a sudden 

147 



BRAIN AND SOUL AND POCKETBOOK 

little street, yet a shaft of sunshine and a bit of 
landscape showing through him so bow-legged 
was he; a cat raising a litter of chickens — in 
a Brooklyn back yard as seen from a train; a 
hen in Flatbush that crows before laying eggs. 
I once saw a crowd so dense that City Hall Park 
was impassable. It was at the beginning of the 
war when the city was charged with anticipation 
as if by electricity. I tried to push by, but 
vainly. It was in front of the Evening Sim 
office, and finally I asked the poHceman the 
latest news from Belgium. I thought he spied 
me curiously. "Look for yourself," he lacon- 
ically replied. I did and saw by the baseball 
score that the Giants were not in the lead. 

It was a t>'pical summer-afternoon crowd. I 
hadn't realised the happy fund of indifference 
possessed by the crowd. Truly happy thus to 
forget — in a game — the tragedy across the 
water. A meeting of street Salvationists far- 
ther down the street made uncouth sounds like 
savages pacifying their idol — all alike in their 
worship of ugliness. 

The old saying, "See Naples and die!" may 
be replaced by "See New York first!" She 
may be enormously vulgar, and the genius of 
her is enormous, and never suggests mediocrity. 
You may hate or love her, but you cannot pass 
her by; and if Stendhal were alive to-day he 
would rechristen the city Cosmopolis, the nois- 
iest Cosmopolis that ever existed, but also the 
New Cosmopolis, the most versatile city on our 
globe. 

148 



VIII 

CONEY ISLAND 

I 

BY DAY 

It was a poster that sent me to Coney Island 
again, although I had sworn never to tread 
again that avenue of hideous sights and sounds, 
had taken a solemn oath to that effect years ago. 
But that poster ! Ah ! if these advertising men 
only knew how their signs and symbols arouse 
human passions they would be more prudent in 
giving artists full swing with their suggestion- 
breeding brushes. 

This is what I saw on the poster: A tall, ener- 
getic band conductor waving his baton over a 
succulent symphony of crabs, lobsters, fruit, 
fish, corn, cantaloups, clams, and water-melons 
— truly a pretty combination, for the over- 
tones are Afro-American, the undertones Asiatic 
cholera. Nevertheless, an appeaHng orchestra 
to palates jaded by city restaurant fare and the 
hot, humid streets. I was in haste to be off. I 
mentally saw that gustatory symphony. I 
heard its colicky music. I tasted its clambake 
instrumentation. I must take the boat at once. 

149 



CONEY ISLAND 

As the tall, architectural chimneys at the 
lower end of the Island slowly receded I noted 
the waffle-like effect of the myriad windows set 
in their staring walls. Waffles ! Yes, that is 
the new note in American architecture; it is the 
very soul of the art. Waffles ! This discovery 
comforted me somewhat, and I began to enjoy 
life and sought for a fresh thrill by gazing steadily 
at the Brooklyn shorescape. 

Perhaps the first definite impression made 
amid the thousands of confusing, beckoning, 
and mutually destructive sights as one comes 
up the harbour is Brooklyn Bridge, seen across 
the green of Governor's Island. The woven 
wires of the structure seem to float; no water, 
except that in the immediate foreground of the 
spectator, suggests the notion that this is a 
bridge; rather is it a fantastic apparition strung 
across an emerald prairie, a huge harp ready 
for the fingers of some monstrous musician, 
whose melodies would be hurricane-like, not 
aeolian. The illusion vanishes the farther down 
or up one sails; it is trapped at its best near 
Staten Island. 

The coast-line of Brooklyn does not lend itself 
to optical enchantment. But it is not more 
depressing than, say, the docks of London after 
you leave Blackfriars Bridge going down Green- 
wich way. Brooklyn is more cheerful because 
of the greater spaces of waterway, because 
of more diversity as to sky-line. In London 
the heavens seem closer to earth, the sky 

150 



I 



CONEY ISLAND 

not as far away as ours. High buildings are 
rare along the Thames, while Brooklyn boasts 
many. The time is not long since the Hotel 
Margaret was the proud monarch of all it sur- 
veyed across the harbour. Now it has numerous 
rivals. They are beginning to string down the 
shore and run a race with the church spires that 
gave to the town of Beecher and Talmage its 
nickname. With the picturesque villas and the 
old fort, the interest merges into the strand, 
into the superior beauties of Bath Beach and 
Norton Point. 

The same old iron steamboats, with the same 
old band of itinerant musicians, arouse mem- 
ories. They still play Non e ver, as they did a 
quarter of a century ago. And more memories 
when the Grand Repubhc passes cityward, its 
flags and pennants flying, the venerable steamer 
as attractive-looking as ever; dwarfed, to be 
sure, since the advent of ocean leviathans, she 
still makes a gallant showing. 

Is our river-excursion service commensurate 
with the volume of its business? It far out- 
shines in efhciency and in the size of its craft 
the Thames or the tiny boats on the Seine. 
Nevertheless, our steamers are not equal to the 
strain put upon them; they are old-fashioned, 
cramped, and with mediocre accommodations. 
They are crowded, too, beyond the danger-Hne. 
A fire, a panic, a collision, and the inherent un- 
worthiness of most of the excursion boats in our 
harbour would be revealed in a moment. The 

151 



CONEY ISLAND 

great god Chance is the patron saint of pilots 
and owners. Votive candles in abundance 
should be burned before his image by grateful 
worshippers, for it is due to his graces that we 
somehow or other muddle through season after 
season without serious accidents. But when 
one arrives it is usually in the category of the 
catastrophic. 

As I first recall Coney Island, one could walk 
on a wide, clean, shining space of sand from the 
Point to the Oriental Hotel. No vile barracks 
and booths snouted their noisome features to 
the water's edge. There was no Sea Gate in 
those days, and the top of the Island was prac- 
tically barren and given over to fishermen. To- 
day the villas and hotels at Sea Gate have im- 
proved matters; but go up the beach a bit, and 
what disillusionment follows! 

From where the Brighton bathing pavilion 
stands, down as far as Ravenhall's, is the cra- 
ziest collection of tumble-down hovels — you 
can't dignify them with any other term — that 
ever disgraced a beautiful sea-view. There are 
exceptions: the Oriental Hotel, — which hasn't 
changed, — the B righton Beach Hotel, the several 
large casinos and restaurants clustering about 
the end of the ocean boulevard, and also the 
municipal bath-house, a building worthy of its 
purpose. I may have omitted a few others, and 
I'm duly sorry in advance; yet do I cling to 
my behef that if the whole horrible aggregation 
of shanties, low resorts, shacks masquerading 

152 



CONEY ISLAND 

as hotels, and the rest were swept off the earth 
by some beneficent visitation of Providence, 
the thanksgivings of the community would be in 
order. 

This sounds selfish, but it's not a question of 
personal feehng; it is a pestilential fact that the 
municipal authorities tolerate such a plague — 
for it is a centre of moral and physical infection 
— on the very heels of the city. This rings of 
humbug "upHft," but it is the naked truth. 
Privileges usurped from the public are granted 
to a lot of greedy money-muckers who bam- 
boozle the people. The poor, more than the 
rich, rob the poor. 

But the people, the poor people ! Must they 
be deprived of their day's outing, of the inno- 
cent, idiotic joys of dear, dear old Coney? You 
know the sentimental cant of the East Side 
sociologist and the friend of the "peepul." No, 
this is no attempt to depreciate the enjoyment 
of the masses and classes (the latter are much 
given to visiting the Island as a sort of vicious 
open-air slumming spot), there is more than one 
centre of amusement — unlike Sodom, Coney 
Island can boast at least ten good inhabitants 
• — but they only serve to set off the repulsive 
qualities of their neighbours. 

I know that you can't make the public enjoy 
the more refined pleasures of a beach free from 
vulgarity and rapacious beach-combers, male 
and female, unless it so wishes. Even mules 
will not drink unless thirsty. The Montessori 

153 



CONEY ISLAND 

method applied to an army of excursionists 
would be ludicrous; it's a sufficient infliction on 
children. In a word, it is not a question of re- 
striction but of regulation; decency, good taste, 
and semibarbarism should not be allowed to 
go unchecked. Coney Island to-day, despite 
the efficiency of the police, is a disgrace to our 
civilisation. It should be abolished and some- 
thing else substituted. 

And now, having abolished the eyesore by a 
mere waving of my wish-wand, let me tell you 
of the joys I experienced after I had landed at 
the Steeplechase Park pier in company with 
some hundreds of fellow lunatics of all ages and 
conditions, for when you are at Coney you cast 
aside your hampering reason and become a plain 
lunatic. It was a great French writer who ad- 
vised his readers to make of themselves beasts 
from time to time, to kick over the slow and 
painful step-ladder of moral restraint and revert 
to the normal animal from which we evolved. 
It is never a difficult precept to follow, although 
the writer didn't mean his text to be exactly in- 
terpreted as I am now doing. 

After the species of straitjacket that we wear 
in every-day life is removed at such Saturnalia 
as Coney Island, the human animal emerges in 
a not precisely winning guise. He and she and 
the brats are a mixture that sets you thinking 
over the idle boast that our century is the 
flowering of culture. As Gustave Flaubert says: 
*'The patriot doesn't always smell nice." 

154 



CONEY ISLAND 

Again you think — cleanliness is greater than 
godliness, and if mankind were friendlier to 
soap this old globe of ours would be a sweeter 
place to live on. But where can they keep 
cleaner than at the seaside, and what seaside is 
so cheap, so near by as Coney ? Sound and un- 
answerable arguments. The man with the 
Brobdingnagian mouth who salutes you from 
the signs as you enter the portal of Steeplechase 
would smile still wider if you attempted to 
answer them. So let us throw logic to the dogs 
and simply be happy because we are alive, be- 
cause the wind is not only in the heather, brother, 
but because the smell of the frankfurter ''dog" 
as it sizzles over the fire ascends to eager nos- 
trils on the dock. 

The fisherman sits line in hand as we pass; a 
sign informs that there are twenty-five thousand 
bathing-suits to hire, and we listlessly gaze at the 
hulk of the only American vessel captured in the 
war with Spain. The barkers arouse us. We 
buy a string of parti-coloured tickets. They are 
so many keys that unlock to us the magic cham- 
bers of this paradise of secular joys and terrors. 
You may swim or guzzle; on the hard backs of 
iron steeds, to the accompaniment of bedlam 
music, you may caracole or go plunging down 
perilous declivities, swinging into the gloom of 
sinister tunnels or, perched aloft, be the envy 
of small boys. 

There is an Italian garden where basket 
parties are forbidden — the only spot in the es- 

155 



CONEY ISLAND 

tablishment — and a vast hall where, as if prac- 
tising the attitudes and steps of some strange 
religious cult, youths and maidens indulge in 
simian gestures and in native buffoonery. Food, 
mountains of it, is cooking. The odour ascends 
to the stars; but you forget as in a monster 
wheel human beings are swung in a giant circle. 
Coasting parties clatter by or else are shot 
down a chute into irritated water. Every de- 
vice imaginable by which man may be separated 
from his dimes without adequate return is in 
operation. You weigh yourself or get it guessed; 
you go into funny houses — oh, the mockery 
of the title ! — and later are tumbled into the 
open, insulted, mortified, disgusted, angry, and 
— laughing. What sights you have seen in 
that prison-house, what gentlewomen — with 
shrill voices — desperately holding on to their 
skirts and their chewing-gum. 

What I can't understand is the lure of the 
Island for the people who come. Why, after 
the hot, narrow, noisy, dirty streets of the city, 
do these same people crowd into the narrower, 
hotter, noisier, dirtier, wooden alleys of Coney? 
Is the wretched. Cheap John fair, with the 
ghastly rubbish for a sale, the magnet? Or is 
it just the gregariousness of the human animal ? 
They leave dirt and disorder to go to greater 
disorder and dirt. The sky is bluer, but they 
don't look at the sky; clam chowder is a more 
agreeable spectacle; and the smacking of a 
thousand lips as throats gurgle with the suspi- 

156 



CONEY ISLAND 

cious compound is welcome to the ears of them 
that pocket the cash. 

How's that for a rhythmic cadence after the 
manner of Flaubert? 

The late Jacob Riis once told me that many 
times he despaired at the apparent hopelessness 
of his efforts to instil the love of cleanliness 
among his poor. To their ancient habits these 
people revert, Hke the beast-folk in H. G. Wells's 
The Island of Doctor Moreau. And at Coney 
Island where the mob is thickest, where your 
ear-drums are shattered by steam-organs, sheet- 
iron bands, and the yelling of barkers, the 
*' people" hurry. I looked, as others before me 
have looked, for Walt Whitman's '^ powerful 
uneducated persons," but in vain. By way of 
compensation every one seemed content. 

But the joylessness of it all ! The miserable 
children, sick from their tenements, sit on dirty 
newspapers spread on the dirty sand and in the 
poisonous blaze of the sun — for some reason 
this sun is supposed to kill in town but will work 
wonders at the beach. What kind of food is 
swallowed I leave to your imagination. The 
place should be called Ptomaines Beach. Fam- 
ily parties with baskets (ever welcome) are bet- 
ter off; they know what they swallow. 

I looked up my orchestra of sea food and 
found it. I confess I enjoyed its crabbed music. 
Once indoors, away from the glare and roar, 
your nerves begin to simmer and your throat 
craves the cool of an element not washing the 

157 



CONEY ISLAND 

front door of the hotel. Then you try to think. 
Impossible. It is a world of screams and hoot- 
ings. 

Farther up at Brighton matters improve, 
though wooden sheds disgrace the beach and 
bar people from its use. I sighed over — I 
always do — the thought of 1888 and the pa- 
vilion at Brighton Beach where Anton Seidl 
gave us ambrosial music. Coney Island was as 
bad as it is to-day, but the Seidl music furnished 
an oasis in a dreary desert of vulgarity. There 
were some New Yorkers alive in those dear but 
distant days. New York was not yet an open, 
noisy trench; nor was it then the dumping- 
ground of the cosmos. However, I am not a 
pessimist, and if I rail at the plague spot, Coney 
Island, it is with the hope that some day it will 
vanish and be succeeded by pleasant parks, 
trees, sea-walls, and stone walks. This madland 
of lunatics, who must go up in the air, down in 
the earth, who must have clatter and dirt, might 
be relegated elsewhither. Certainly people don't 
go to Coney for the sea or the air or the view. 

If the worthy ladies and ''uplifters" of inde- 
terminate sex (chiefly old women in trousers) 
would turn their attention to making the seaside 
beautiful, or if not beautiful then decent, they 
would justify their civic existence. Here is 
where the busy female, with or without a ballot, 
can come in. A new and attractive Coney 
Island should be their slogan. But the pubHc 
likes to be fooled, swindled — alas ! 

158 



CONEY ISLAND 

Where stood the old Manhattan Hotel is 
now a comely terrace which, when the trees have 
grown, will be a garden by the sea. The bath- 
ing pavilion is still there — too small for its 
clientele, yet cleaner than Brighton and less 
populated. As I no longer bathe at the beach, 
I hold no brief for any particular location. I 
am stating the bald, unflattering facts. 

There is Brighton, England, as an example 
to emulate. What a beautiful boulevard by the 
water it has built, so satisfying in its solidity 
and spaciousness. The hotels are massive, the 
view unobstructed. Ostend and Scheveningen, 
two other European resorts, are also examples 
for the heedless and conceited public administra- 
tors who let our beaches go to rack and ruin or 
evade the issue by erecting temporary structures. 
That's why so many Americans go to Europe 
in the summer. They get something for their 
money. 

But if you want to experience the "emotion 
of multitude," there is no spot on earth for the 
purpose like Coney Island. 

II 
AT NIGHT 

It was the hottest night of the summer at 
Coney Island. All day a steaming curtain of 
mist hid the sun from the eyes of men and 
women and children; yet proved no shield 

159 



CONEY ISLAND 

against the blasting heat. Humidity and not 
the sun-rays had been the enemy. And when 
a claret-coloured disk showed dully through the 
nacreous vapours just before setting we knew 
that the night would bring little respite from 
the horror of the waking hours. It was a time 
to try men's nerves. The average obligations 
of life had faded into the abyss of general indif- 
ference, one that had absorbed the exactions of 
daily behaviour — politeness, order, sobriety, 
and decency. Add a few notches upward on 
the thermometer, and mankind soon reverts to 
the habits and conditions of his primitive an- 
cestors. The ape, the tiger, and the jackal in 
all of us come to the surface with shocking ra- 
pidity. We are, in a reasonable analysis, the 
victims of our environment, the slaves of tem- 
perature. Heat and cold have produced the 
African and the Laplander. At Coney Island 
during a torrid spell we are very near the soil; 
we cast to the winds modesty, prudence, and 
dignity. Then, life is worth living only when 
stripped to the skin. 

Three seasons had I passed without a visit to 
this astonishing bedlam, yet I found the place 
well-nigh unrecognisable. Knowing old Coney 
Island, the magnitude of its changes did not so 
much amaze and terrify me. One should never 
be amazed in America. After an hour's hasty 
survey, Atlantic City seemed a normal spot. 
Broad stretches of board walk, long, sweeping 
beaches, space to turn about — these and other 

1 60 



CONEY ISLAND 

items might be added. But at Coney Island 
the cramped positions one must assume to stand 
or move, the fierce warfare of humanity as it 
forces its way along the streets or into the crazy 
shows — surely conceived by madmen for mad- 
men — the indescribable and hideous symphony 
of noise running the gamut from shrill steam- 
whistles to the diapasonic roar of machinery; 
decidedly the entire place produced the sensa- 
tion of abnormality, of horrible joys grabbed at 
by a savage horde of barbarians, incapable of 
repose even in their moments of leisure. Some 
one has said that the Englishman takes his 
pleasures sadly; then we must take ours by 
rude assault. All Coney Island reminded me 
of a disturbed ant-heap, the human ants fero- 
cious in their efforts to make confusion thrice con- 
founded, to heap up horrors of sound and of sight. 
There must be in every one, no matter how 
phlegmatic, a residuum of energy which may boil 
over when some exciting event knocks at the 
door of our being. It is, psychologists assure 
us, the play-instinct of the animal in us that 
delights in games innocent and dangerous. If 
forty thousand people assemble to see a game of 
baseball, how many more would gather with 
feverish gaiety if there were a surety of the um- 
pire's death at every game ? The Romans daily 
witnessed men and women destroyed in the 
arena of their circus — witnessed it with a sat- 
isfaction aesthetic and profound. The reason 
was not that they were less civilised than the 

i6i 



CONEY ISLAND 

moderns, but only more frank. Their play- 
instinct was more fully developed and the clas- 
sical world was not hampered by our moral 
prejudices. 

As cruelty is proscribed among highly civ- 
ilised nations to-day — the game of life being 
so vilely cruel that the arena with its bulls and 
tigers is unnecessary — our play-instinct finds 
vent in a species of diversion that must not be 
examined too closely, as it verges perilously on 
idiocy. Coney Island is only another name for 
topsyturvydom. There the true becomes the 
grotesque, the vision of a maniac. Else why 
those nerve-racking entertainments, ends of the 
world, creations, hells, heavens, fantastic trips 
to ugly lands, panoramas of sheer madness, 
flights through the air in boats, through water 
in sleds, on the earth in toy trains ! Unreality 
is as greedily craved by the mob as alcohol by 
the dipsomaniac; indeed, the jumbled night- 
mares of a morphine eater are actually realised 
at Luna Park. Every angle reveals some new 
horror. Mechanical waterfalls, with women and 
children racing around curving, tumbling floods; 
elephants tramping ponderously through streets 
that are a bewildering muddle of many nations, 
many architectures; deeds of Western violence 
and robbery, illustrated with a realism that is 
positively enthralling; Japanese and Irish, Ger- 
mans and Indians, Hindus and Italians, cats 
and girls and ponies and — the list sets whirring 
the wheels of the biggest of dictionaries. 

162 



CONEY ISLAND 

In Dreamland there is a white tower that 
might rear itself in Seville and cause no com- 
ment. (This was so before fire destroyed the 
place.) Hemming it about are walls of mon- 
strosities — laughable, shocking, sinister, and 
desperately depressing. In the centre flying 
boats cleave the air; from the top of a crimson 
lighthouse flat, sled-like barges plunge down a 
liquid railroad, while from every cavern issue 
screams of tortured and delighted humans and 
the hoarse barking of men with megaphones. 
They assault your ears with their invitations, 
protestations, and blasphemies. You are con- 
jured to ''go to Hell — gate"; you are singled 
out by some brawny individual with threaten- 
ing intonations and bade enter the animal show 
where a lion or a tiger is warranted to claw a 
keeper at least once a day. The glare is ap- 
palling, the sky a metallic blue, the sun a slayer. 

And then the innumerable distractions of 
the animated walks, the dwarfs and the dogs, 
the horses and the miniature railway. Inside the 
various buildings you may see the cosmos in 
the act of formation, or San Francisco destroyed 
by fire and quake; the end of life, organic and 
inorganic, is displayed for a modest pittance; 
you may sleigh in Switzerland or take a lulling 
ride in Venetian gondolas. But nothing is real. 
Doubtless the crowd would be disappointed by 
a glimpse of the real Venice, the real Switzer- 
land, the real hell, the real heaven. Everything 
is the reflection of a cracked mirror held in the 

163 



CONEY ISLAND 

hand of the clever showman, who, knowing us 
as children of a larger growth, compounds his 
mess, bizarre and ridiculous, accordingly. There 
is little need to ponder the whys and wherefores 
of our aberrancy. Once en masse, humanity 
sheds its civilisation and becomes half child, 
half savage. In the theatres the gentlest are 
swayed by a sort of mob mania and dehght in 
scenes of cruelty and bloodshed — though at 
home the sight of a canary with a broken wing 
sets stirring in us tender sympathy. A crowd 
seldom reasons. It will lynch an innocent man 
or glorify a scamp politician with equal facility. 
Hence the monstrous debauch of the fancy at 
Coney Island, where New York chases its chi- 
mera of pleasure. 

Nevertheless, with all its perversion, its ob- 
lique image of life, is Coney Island much madder 
than the Stock Exchange, the prize-ring, roUer- 
skating, a fashionable cotillion, a political mass- 
meeting, or some theatrical performances ? Again 
I must bid you to remember that everything 
is relative; that the morals of one age are the 
crimes of another; that I am, comparatively 
speaking, a stranger to our summer cities and 
perhaps not peculiarly well j&tted to judge of 
such an astounding institution as Coney Island. 

The madness converges below Brighton, reach- 
ing its apex on Surf Avenue, jammed with plea- 
sure-seekers, fringed by ''fakers" and their ut- 
terly abominable wares. Farther up the beach 
order reigns, men and women are clothed in 

164 



CONEY ISLAND 

their right mind, walk, talk, and act rationally. 
At the Oriental dignity prevails. Few people 
are to be seen. The place slumbers. You feel 
that in such a hotel you may live as you wish. 
Manhattan, no longer queen of the beaches, has 
its interest. The bathing attracts. The wide 
porches and the dining couples are pleasing to 
see. A theatre there is for those to whom the 
ocean is not a stimulating spectacle. Walk 
farther. We reach Brighton. There the pot 
begins to bubble. A smaller Coney confronts 
you. You pass on. Stopping before what was 
once Anton Seidl's music pavilion, you indulge, 
more sadly than sentimentally, in memories of 
those evenings, over two decades ago, when the 
sound of the waves formed a background for 
the dead "^master's music-making — Beethoven 
and Wagner and Liszt. 

Instead of Briinnhilde and her sisters' wild 
ride, we hear the wooden horse orchestrion 
screeching ''Meet Me at the Church." Move 
on? Has public musical taste moved with the 
years ? Meet me at the madhouse ! We reach 
the Boulevard and note its agreeable vastness. 
The sun has set and the world is become sud- 
denly afire. 

Then Coney Island, with its vulgarity, its 
babble and tumult, is a glorified city of flame. 
But don't go too near it; your wings will easily 
singe on the broad avenue where beer, sausage, 
fruit, pop-corn, candy, flapjacks, green corn, and 
again beer, rule the appetites of the multitude. 

165 



CONEY ISLAND 

After seeing the aerial magic of that great pyro- 
technic artist Pain, a man who could, if he so 
desired, create a new species of art, and his noc- 
turnes of jewelled fire, you wonder why the entire 
beach is not called Fire Island. The view of 
Luna Park from Sheepshead Bay suggests a 
cemetery of fire, the tombs, turrets, and towers 
illuminated, and mortuary shafts of flame. At 
Dreamland the little lighthouse is a scarlet in- 
candescence. The big building stands a daz- 
zHng apparition for men on ships and steamers 
out at sea. Everything is fretted with fire. 
Fire delicately etches som.e fairy structure; fire 
outlines an Oriental gateway; fire runs like a 
musical scale through many octaves, the dark- 
ness crowding it, the mist blurring it. Fire is 
the god of Coney Island after sundown, and fire 
was its god this night, the hottest of the summer. 
At ten o'clock the crowds had not abated. 
Noise still reigned over the Bowery, and the 
cafes, restaurants, dens, and shows were full of 
gabbling, eating, drinking, cursing, and laugh- 
ing folk. I had intended to return either to my 
hotel or to New York, but the heat pinioned 
my will. In company with thousands, I strolled 
the beach near the Boulevard. An amiable 
policeman told me that few people would go 
back to the city, that, hot as it was at Coney, 
the East Side was more stifling. The sight of 
cars coming down crowded at eleven o'clock and 
returning half-full at midnight determined my 
plan of action. I went to my hotel, put on a 

i66 



CONEY ISLAND 

sweater and a cap, changed a bill into silver, and 
with a stick for company I returned to the West 
End. There were more people than before, 
though it was nearly one o'clock and the lights 
were beginning to dim. I searched for the 
friendly policeman, but instead found a surly 
one, who warned me that it would be a risk to 
venture upon the beach if I had a watch or 
money. I longed for a Josiah Flynt who would 
pilot me through this jungle of humanity. The 
heat was depressing and mosquitoes made us 
miserable. They knew me for a fresh comer 
and exacted a sorry toll from my hands, neck, 
and face. I wavered in my resolution to spend 
the night on the beach. I had left my rake at 
home, and as I am not a socialist I could not 
emulate the performances of the ''white mice," 
as the East Side names the good, well-dressed 
young men and women of means who make 
sociological calls on them, note-books in their 
hands, curiosity in their eyes, and burning en- 
thusiasm in their hearts. 

All the lights of the pleasure palaces were ex- 
tinguished. Across at Riccadonna's there was 
still a light, and peering over the Brighton pa- 
vilion there was a pillar of luminosity that looked 
a cross between a corn-cob and a thermometer 
afire. I sat down on the sand. I would stay 
out the night. And then I began to look about 
me. In Hyde Park, London, I had seen hun- 
dreds of vagabonds huddled in the grass, their 
clothes mere rags, their attitudes those of death, 

167 



CONEY ISLAND 

but nothing in England or America can match 
what I saw this particular night. While the 
poorer classes predominated, there was little 
suggestion of abject pauperism. Many seemed 
gay. The white dresses of the women and 
children reHeved the sombre masses of black 
men, who, though coatless for the most part, 
made black splotches on the sand. In serried 
array they lay; there was no order in their po- 
sition, yet a short distance away they gave the 
impression of an army at rest. The entire 
beach was thick with humanity. At close 
range it resolved itself in groups, sweethearts in 
pairs, families of three or four, six or seven, 
planted close together. With care, hesitation, 
and difficulty I navigated around these islets of 
flesh and blood. Sometimes I stumbled over a 
foot or an arm. Once I kicked a head, and I 
was cursed many times and vigorously cursed. 
But I persisted. Like the ''white mice," I was 
there to see. Policemen plodded through the 
crowds, and if there was undue hilarity warned 
the offenders in a low voice. But it was im- 
possible for such a large body of people to be 
more orderly, more decent. I determined to 
prowl down the lower beach, between the 
Boulevard and Sea Gate. 

My sporting instinct came to the surface. 
Here was game. Not in the immemorial mob, 
joking and snoring, shrieking and buzzing, 
would I find what I sought. I tried to pass 
under the bathing-houses, but so densely packed 

i68 



CONEY ISLAND 

were the paths that I was threatened by a dozen 
harsh voices. So I pursued a safer way, down 
Surf Avenue. It was still filled with people — 
men and women, battered, bleary, drunk or 
tired, dragged their weary paces, regarding each 
other as do wolves, ready to spring. We all 
felt like sticky August salt. Reaching the 
beach again, I was too fatigued to walk farther. 
I propped my head against the wooden pillar of 
an old bath-house and my eyes began to droop. 
I heard without a quiver of interest the sudden 
scream of a woman followed by ominous bass 
laughter. Some one plucked a banjo. Dogs 
barked. A hymn rose on the hot air. Around 
me it was like a battle-field of the slain. A 
curious drone was in the air; it was the monster 
breathing. A muggy moon shone intermittently 
over us, its bleached rays painting in one ghastly 
tone the upturned faces of the sleepers. The 
stale, sour, rank smell of wretched mankind 
poisoned the atmosphere, thick with sultry 
vapours. I wished myself home. 

Then a gentle voice said — the accent was 
slightly foreign : 

''What a sight the poor make in the moon- 
light!" I did not turn, but answered that I 
had thought that same thing. The voice pro- 
ceeded. It was not strong, though a resonant 
barytone : 

"You are alone, good sir; but look at my 
brood, and don't wonder at people dying with- 
out asking the world's permission." 

169 



CONEY ISLAND 

I half arose, expecting that it was a beggar 
who addressed me. A child began whimpering. 
I saw a woman on her side holding with relaxed 
grasp this crying infant — the wail was hardly 
perceptible above the swish of the surf. Near 
her were two older children. The man who had 
spoken to me was sitting, his head plunged 
almost between his knees, his skinny hands sup- 
porting his head. He was exceedingly poor, 
wearing only a ragged shirt and trousers. His 
head was large and curly with thick hair. He 
could not have been more than forty. When he 
lifted his head his eyes in the moonshine were 
like two red cinders. A wild beast — and with 
a gentle, even cultivated, voice. I went over 
to him. The child still moaned as the fingers 
of the exhausted woman opened farther. I 
forgot sociology and wondered if here was a 
case of starvation — a hungry family in all the 
Gargantuan feast of Coney Island. The idea 
was horrible. 

''What's the matter, Batiushka?" I asked, 
adopting a famihar form of Russian salutation. 
He fell on his knees. 

"Brother," he panted, "are you a Russian? 
A Jew? Help us. We have not eaten since 
yesterday morning." I confess I shuddered. I 
confess also that I didn't believe him. A man, 
a Jewish man with a family, in New York and 
starving! New York, with its rich charitable 
institutions ! And this fellow tried to make me 
think that he needed food; that his wife and 

170 



CONEY ISLAND 

children needed food! I had eaten my dinner 
at the Manhattan, and I enjoyed that selfish 
credulity which an able-bodied gourmand feels 
when he is approached by some one who has 
tasted no food for days. 

And this miserable being came nearer to me, 
feebly, supplicatingly. His eyes were like red 
dots in the head of a famished animal. His hot 
breath issued as from an open grave. The 
child sobbed louder, and the mother, half awake, 
clutched it. She sat up. The other two chil- 
dren arose, alarmed, silent. It was too much for 
my pampered nerves. Bidding the man remain 
where he was, I ran across the beach to the 
Bowery and into a little saloon full of half- 
drunken, vicious people. Ten minutes later 
we sat at an improvised supper of pretzels, cold 
fish, and beer. I knew this family wouldn't 
touch anything else. Starvation itself would not 
force them to break their tribal law. I have 
an idea that I was thirsty myself, for I enjoyed 
the flat beer and I enjoyed the subdued ferocity 
with wliich the family ate and drank. The 
baby did not stir. It had fallen asleep. The 
mother, a worn-out woman, still young, me- 
chanically put the food into her mouth, not 
looking at us, not speaking to the two girls. 
She was numbed by hunger and heat. 

''See here, what's your name?" I asked. 
"My name," he stammered, ''is Hyman." "I 
mean your family name," I demanded; "Hy- 
man is your first name." He gave me a keen 

171 



CONEY ISLAND 

glance. Then he quietly replied: ^'You are 
right. My full name is Hyman Levin." "Have 
you a home ? " I pursued. I felt my importance. 
I was playing the role of benefactor, and what 
philanthropist, great or small, does not desire 
the worth of his money? Besides, it is good 
policy to cross-examine a starving man. He 
appreciates your interest at such a time. (Oh, 
what smiling villains are we all !) 

" I live in an alley near Oliver Street. Usually 
we go to the recreation pier near Peck Slip, but 
the child was so sick that I came down here last 
night." "Last night?" "Yes, I pawned my 
coat to get the car fare." 

This is a truthful report of the man's conver- 
sation. He was out of work — sickness — and 
he had pawned, piece by piece, bit by bit, every- 
thing in the house. His wife went to the pawn- 
house, while he, scarcely able to hold up his 
head, watched the baby. The children lived 
in the streets, feeding at the garbage cans, 
thankful for such a chance. Is this exaggera- 
tion? If you think so, then you don't know 
your own city. Such things happen every day. 
The neighbours were kind, especially the Irish. 
But they, too, could scarcely boast more than 
one meal a day. Hyman coughed ; he evidently 
was marked for the death of a consumptive. 
Yet he fought on. The charities were available 
— for a time. But funds ran low; pubHc in- 
terest also ran low. The Levins found them- 
selves within five days of rent time in their room, 

172 



CONEY ISLAND 

a musty, dirty garret. Life from heat and in- 
sufficient food became intolerable, and, half 
crazed with fever, on that hot Monday, they 
contrived to reach the seashore. With only a 
few pennies, yet they were happier; they could 
at least breathe fresh air, see the water. But 
so forbidding was the appearance of this un- 
happy family that they were warned off the 
board walk and frightened away from the crowd 
of pleasure-seekers. We do not care to see these 
death's-heads at our feasts. Finally they found 
refuge under the bath-house, and there I met 
them. 

Worse remains. When the dawn came up 
softly like the vanguard of an army without 
banners I shook the sleeping Hyman. I awoke 
the woman. I had heard queer sounds in the 
throat of the child, noises Hke water slowly 
dripping into a well. Why should I go on? 
The child was dead, and I was not surprised. 
Nor were the parents. They made no outcry, 
but covered the little thing with the mother's 
old pelisse. Stunned by their cumulative mis- 
fortunes, this death was accepted with the 
fatalism of a Russian. I told a policeman the 
story, and a half-hour later the entire family was 
carted away with the promise that they would 
be given food and shelter. 

There was a bitter taste in my mouth. If a 
poor devil of a tramp or a working man had met 
me then I should not have been able to look 
either one in the eye. Oh, how cheap is charity ! 

173 



CONEY ISLAND 

The silver I spent did not relieve the Levins. 
They had scarcely bade me good-bye, so op- 
pressed were they by their sorrow, their shame. 
They must have hated me. The man was not 
ignorant. His Enghsh betrayed a reader. He 
had conversed well about Gorky and Tolstoy, had 
read Karl Marx, and knew the names of all his 
saints of anarchy. A sociaKst ? I do not know. 
I only know that your bookish theories go to 
smash when you hear a man's voice thrill with 
anguish. A pauper, you say, a lazy, good-for- 
nothing? Ay, perhaps he was — perhaps they 
all are; but drunkard, thief, even murderer, 
must they starve? Anarchs and infidels? So 
were the Americans of 1776, according to the 
English. 

Remember what Richard Jeffries wrote: 
*'Food and drink, roof and clothes are the in- 
alienable right of every child born into the light. 
If the world does not provide it freely — not as 
a grudging gift, but as a right, as a son of the 
house sits down to breakfast — then is the 
world mad. ... I verily believe that the earth 
in one year produces enough food to last for 
thirty. Why, then, have we not enough? . . . 
It is not the pauper — • oh, inexpressibly wicked 
word ! — it is the well-to-do who are the criminal 
classes. '^ Grant Allen said that all men are 
born free and unequal. True. But should they 
be allowed to want for bread ? 

Don't ask me the remedy. I am neither a 
professional prophet nor a socialist. Don't 

174 



CONEY ISLAND 

throw socialism at my head. Ready-made 
prophylactics smell suspiciously. The ''dismal 
science" scares me. Before the fatal words 
*' unearned increment" I retreat. And the 
socialist's conception of the state approaches 
singularly close to the old conception of mon- 
archy. I know that there are many Levins in 
New York, of many nationalities. Starve in 
New York, the abundant city, where ''God's 
in the world to-day"? Impossible! cry the 
sentimentalists. I didn't believe it, either, 
until I met the Levins. That adventure has 
cured me of all foolish optimistic boasting. 
I have told the story plainly. I realised of 
how little account to people in such awful 
straits is the clangour of contending political 
parties. Of what interest to a man, his belly 
pinched by starvation, whether one Jack in 
office is ousted by another Jack who desires the 
place; whether this one is President, that one 
is governor? A flare of fireworks, a river of 
beer, on the East Side for a night, and the people 
are forgotten by their masters. It has been so 
always; for eternity it will endure. Does not 
Campanella's sonnet sing: 

The people is a beast of muddy brain 

That knows not its own strength, and therefore stands 

Loaded with wood and stone; 

Its own are all things between earth and Heaven; 
But this it knows not, and if one arise 
To tell this truth it kills him unforgiven. 



CONEY ISLAND 

Grunting, growling, spitting, coughing, the 
huge army of thousands began in maelstrom 
fashion to move cityward. Some stopped at 
the half-way house of whisky; many break- 
fasted, but the main body made a dash for the 
cars. The night had been a trying one, the new 
day did not promise; yet it was a new day, and 
with it a flock of fresh hopes was born. The 
crowd seemed rested; in its eyes was the lust of 
Hfe, and it was absolutely good-humoured. I 
heard a vague tale about a man-hunt during the 
night — how a thief had been chased with 
stones and clubs until, reaching Sea Gate, he 
had boldly plunged into the water and disap- 
peared. His hawk-like features, the colour of 
clay from fright, had impressed the old man who 
related the story. In return I told the Levins* 
heart-breaking tale, and he did not appear much 
interested. What signified to all those strong, 
bustling men and women the death of a tiny 
girl baby — dead and hardly clad in a wisp of 
blackened canvas? 

''Better dead!" The mobs thickened. Po- 
licemen fought them into line. The hot sun 
arose, in company with the penetrating odours 
of bad coffee and greasy crullers. Another day's 
labour was arrived. Soon would appear the first 
detachment of women and children sick from the 
night in the city. Soon would be heard the 
howling of the fakers: '' Go to Hell, go to Hell — 
gate!" 

I felt that I had been very near it, that I had 

176 



CONEY ISLAND 

seen a new Coney Island. I went home, after 
this, the most n '^erable night of my hfe — mis- 
erable because my nerves were out of gear. I 
was once more the normal, selfish man, think- 
ing of his bed, of his breakfast. I had, of course, 
quite forgotten the Levins. 



177 



PART II 

CERTAIN EUROPEAN CITIES 
BEFORE THE WAR 



VIENNA 



I ALWAYS know when I am in Austria; the 
coffee is much better than the watery, flavour- 
less compound you are offered in Germany. 
Perhaps the sharper accents of the Viennese 
cuisine may not appeal to you — the German 
cookery by comparison is colourless — but the 
superiority of the coffee and pastry is manifest. 

I am sure this is not a happy way of begin- 
ning to sing the praises of Vienna, the magnifi- 
cent; but, after all, sufficient for the day is the 
Baedeker thereof. Open that invaluable vol- 
ume penned by a man and brother, and you will 
find sound advice as to seeing Vienna and its 
environs in three days, more or less. Now I 
submit that is not the way to do it; ten years 
in the Austrian capital wouldn't exhaust its 
charms, yet as most travellers allow themselves 
about a week or ten days, it is best to follow the 
advice of good old Br'er Baedeker. And here 
I leave him, for I am essentially a rambler, a 
prowler, lazy, leisurely curious, and seldom 
sorry when it's dinner time. (Mrs. Ralph Waldo 
Emerson once remarked that Thoreau never 

i8i 



VIENNA 

went beyond the sound of the dinner horn, and 
who am I to be ashamed of a similar weakness ?) 

Of course, the proper manner of writing on 
such a resounding theme as Vienna would be to 
begin, as do all the guides and guide-books, with 
St. Stephen's Cathedral (old '^Steffel," as it is 
called by the natives) for the central point of 
departure, trailing around the churches, trapes- 
ing through the art galleries, and finally going 
to the Prater. 

You recall the popular lecturer, the spot-light, 
the ''ladies and gentlemen, this evening we pro- 
pose to visit the city on the blue Danube. To 
the right you may notice the spire of the won- 
drously beautiful cathedral erected in the year" 
— click, and the screen shows you the church ! 
The stomach of Vienna first interested me, not 
its soul, and after a ride around the city in the 
''saloon carriage" of the Municipal Street Rail- 
way line I started out to investigate the places 
wherein Vienna eats and drinks. Please par- 
don this unconventional method. Doesn't a 
traveller when arriving in a city eat and drink 
before he goes sightseeing ? 

Let me hasten to tell you that I have been in 
Vienna both winter and summer. The latter 
season is incomparably the better time to enjoy 
the town, but if you haven't been there in win- 
ter you only know Vienna one-half. 

June is lovely. December more brilliant, 
more stimulating. I confess at the outset I like 
the Austrian kitchen better than the German. 

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Hungary lends her paprika, her paprika-chicken, 
her gulyas, her Esterhazy roast, and Vienna 
has her bread, her real Schnitzel, various stews, 
risi-bisi (rice and peas), suckling pig, splendid 
fish, sausages, rich soups — Minestra, an Ital- 
ian variety — and dumplings in a dozen shapes. 
And Apfelstrudel ! And Kaiserschmarn ! A half 
hundred dehcious desserts, with the aroma of 
coffee as an aureole at the close of the meal (or 
at five in the afternoon). Nevertheless, there is 
seldom repletion; you are satisfied with the 
flavouring and do not, as in Germany, eat, eat, 
eat, as if in search of something you seldom find. 

If I whispered that the difference between 
German and Austrian cookery depended upon 
butter and the judicious use of the humble 
onion you would, perhaps, smile. Yet is it so. 
The onion and its more athletic relative, garlic, 
is the foundational base of not only Austrian 
but the best cuisines in the world. I see you 
hold up hands of horror, nevertheless a nuance 
of garlic lends many a meal its flavour. (I said 
a nuance !) It is the chromatic scale in the 
harmonies of taste. Viennese cooks know this, 
and without your leave employ that so-called 
offensive vegetable, the onion, so skilfully that 
you eat and admire. 

Naturally no one will admit this, tourists are 
so scared of the health-giving product. But my 
mouth still waters over my memories. The noble 
art of glutting is cultivated in all Austria. 

I strolled from Sacher's on the Augustiner- 

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strasse, where the menu is first-class, high in 
price, the wines impeccable, over to Hartmann's 
on the Ring. It is across the street from the 
Grand Hotel, and I'll wager there is no restau- 
rant in Vienna where one hears so much English 
(usually American-English) as in this comfort- 
able, comparatively cheap establishment. Its 
cuisine is Austrian mixed with French. The 
cooking is excellent and sets a pace. Meissl 
and Schadn's on the Karntnerstrasse is typical 
Viennese, with its suckling pig, risi-bisi, pickled 
veal, and sauerkraut (such sublimated sauer- 
kraut), to be had at far from high prices. The 
Stephankeller (Cafe de 1' Europe) is another 
meeting-ground for good livers. At Cause's, 
the Rother Igel, the Rathhauskeller, you may 
taste the wines of the country, rather too thin 
and shrewd for my palate; Voslau, Cum- 
poldskirchen, Nussberg, Klosterneuberg, Retz, 
Pfaffstadt, Mailberg, and the heavier Dalmatian 
vintages. As I stuck to my favourite beverage. 
Pilsner, I can lay no claim to being an expert on 
the subject of the wines; furthermore, my pro- 
nounced taste for peppery, highly flavoured 
food is hardly a criterion for the milder palates 
of visitors from abroad. The big hotels know 
this, and there you get the '^ international" cook- 
ing, which prevails over all Europe, even in the 
dining-cars, a something that belongs to no na- 
tion, neither French, German, nor English — 
cosmopolitan, in a word. There are exceptions 
in Vienna; for example, at the Bristol, with its 

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VIENNA 

French chef, you fancy yourself in Paris at Pail- 
lard's — that is to say, if you order a special 
dinner. Otherwise one hotel table d'hote is like 
another: neither fish nor flesh, nor good red 
herring. 

But the Pilsner in Vienna ! That would need 
a complete chapter. While it is not so super- 
latively fine as at Prague, with that supernal 
touch which never can be elsewhere duplicated, 
it is wonderful enough, though I noted with 
dismay, as I noted in Stuttgart, Munich, Dres- 
den, and Berlin, that the invasion of the Amer- 
ican had been fatal in the matter of tempera- 
tures. The European now drinks his beer cold, 
even icy. In few spots could I find the precise 
degree of temperature at which Pilsner is at its 
bloomiest. 

I do not think it necessary here to allude to 
the numerous beer restaurants, where all the 
world, his wife, mother-in-law, and the children 
eat daily and sip the almost non-alcoholic dark 
and light brews. I speak of certain semisacred 
houses where the ritual of beer-drinking is ob- 
served, where at prescribed hours fanatics meet 
and solemnly absorb the amber brew. Woe to 
the waiter if the foam is not of the creamiest ! 
Woe to the host if any marked variation of tem- 
perature is felt ! 

In a little old house, which might be called 
"quaint," on a little street near a Greek church, 
is the Reichenberger or Grieschenbeisl. There 
the best-kept Pilsner in Vienna may be found. 

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VIENNA 

There also many artists, actors, musicians as- 
semble of nights, and a merry company it is. 
However, Vienna is not a "late" city, as is, 
for example, Berlin. At midnight the streets 
are deserted except at Carnival time or New 
Year's eve — last New Year's eve the crush 
was as bad as on Broadway. 

In Berlin I have seen intoxicated persons, 
seldom in Vienna have I encountered one. The 
point is significant, as is the agreeable cooking 
of the city. Food plays a greater role in our 
psychology than our thin-skinned idealists will 
admit. Possibly our national cooking may be 
the bar sinister in our artistic productivity, for 
a country which is given over to fanatics and 
prudes — in the domain of eating and drinking 
— will never give birth to individual art. 

II 

The gayest city I have ever lived in is Vienna. 
Paris is feverish. Paris takes its pleasures very 
much as does New York, in a hurry, as if to 
snatch at the fugitive moment and like Faust 
cry: ''Stay! Thou art so fair." Berlin, I found, 
was too self-conscious, too cultured to relax, 
while Munich is a trifle too soggy, too "wet." 
Vienna, for me, hits the medium of gaiety with- 
out hectic symptoms and leisure without Prus- 
sian stiffness. The elements of the Austrian race 
are heterogeneous; the Slavic counts, and counts 
the Magyar. The tongue is Germanic, the cul- 

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VIENNA 

ture is, minus a heavy Teutonic quality, also 
Germanic; there is a Hghtness in the moral 
atmosphere that might be called Gallic. 

The Viennese man is an optimist. He re- 
gards life not so steadily, or as a whole, but as 
a gay fragment. Clouds gather, the storm 
breaks, then the rain stops and the sun floats 
once more in the blue. Let to-morrow take 
care of itself, to-day we go to the Prater and 
watch the wheels go round. This irresponsi- 
bility is confined to no class. Whether all the 
folk you see in the restaurants, cafes, and gardens 
can afford to spend money as they indubitably 
do, I cannot pretend to know. They eat and 
drink the best, and, as a native said to me, if they 
were without a roof they would still go to the res- 
taurants. Well fed, with good, flavoured food, 
therefore eupeptic, not dyspeptic, the Viennese 
are seemingly contented; they look so, and they 
are always cheerful. 

Their tobacco is better than the tobacco of 
France or Germany — it is both odorous and 
cheap. Coffee is the magnet late in the after- 
noon, and it is difficult to get a seat after five 
o'clock in any of the numerous places. I re- 
member one cafe, on the Karntnerstrasse, which 
is appropriately called the Guckfenster, from 
the windows of which you may stare at the 
passing show. Every afternoon I went there 
early so as to secure my favourite seat, and there 
I sipped and stared and stared and sipped, and 
in the dolce far niente I marvelled over the f util- 

187 



VIENNA 

ity of life, especially the futility of American life, 
its hurry, bustle, money-making. In six months 
I told myself I would be transformed into a 
joyous looker-on in Vienna, quite oblivious to 
the ambitions of the Western world. 

Oh, how mistaken I was! No one works 
harder than the Vienna business man and 
woman; their hours are at least a third longer 
than the hours of an American, yet they contrive 
so to space them that they appear to have Kmit- 
less leisure. How do they do it? The climate 
is soft, which allows of open-air life; the women 
work more than the men; the piety of the peo- 
ple at large is pronounced — the churches Sun- 
day morning are as crowded as are the cafes 
Sunday afternoon — there is unmistakable pov- 
erty, nevertheless the mercurial spirit prevails 
everywhere. 

It gives Vienna its primal charm, it hums in 
the air. No wonder Johann Strauss composed 
his music; no wonder the otherwise ponderous 
Johannes Brahms preferred this spot to his birth- 
place, Hamburg; no wonder Beethoven here 
wrote the scherzi of his symphonies. Vienna 
inspired these composfers, as it inspired Mozart 
and Schubert. Some of these musicians cursed 
the frivolity of the capital, but her deep, abiding 
charm held them close to her. 

The obverse of the medal is this same frivolity. 
But there is also an earnest intellectual and 
artistic life. In one week last winter I attended 
conferences by Gerhart Hauptmann, Georg 

i88 



VIENNA 

Brandes — the latter dealt with Goethe and 
Strindberg — and I heard Moriz Rosenthal, 
Eugen d'Albert, Godowsky, and the Rose quar- 
tet, and attended a performance by the greatest 
of orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic, under 
the leadership of Felix Weingartner, who gave 
a reading of the Brahms fourth symphony (in 
E minor), which, according to the interpreta- 
tions of most conductors, is a grey-in-grey, 
crabbed pattern, instead of the glowing, lumi- 
nous and eloquently expressive masterpiece it 
became under the hands of Weingartner. Not 
a bad record, is it, for the city on the brown 
and turbid Danube? 

Then there is the opera, there are the theatres, 
and, to jump to the other side of the scale, there 
are the medical schools and surgeons and phy- 
sicians who have not their equal anywhere. 
And the university life. 

I only know Vienna superficially, the inner 
social life not at all, but to my inexperienced 
masculine eyes the Vienna woman is the best 
dressed in the world after the American. (Paris 
is, of course, hors concours.) There, again, the 
touch is Gallic. The beauty of the Viennese 
women is proverbial. That gipsy-like colouring, 
hair, and eyes, the fresh complexions, the gen- 
eral style — best described as fesch — is to be 
found in no place but Vienna. The men dress 
like Londoners, are more particular than the 
Germans in the cut of their clothes, the colour of 
their ties, and the set of their silk hats. A pros- 

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VIENNA 

perous, prodigal, vivacious population, hard as 
nails if driving a bargain, as hospitable as can 
be when business is over and the hour of recrea- 
tion is at hand: I'heure exquise, not of absinthe, 
but of coffee. And then there is Vienna, the 
magnificent. 

Ill 

Vienna, the magnificent ! I fear the approach 
of the dithyrambic. Vienna is truly the city of 
magnificent distances; not even Washington 
deserves the title as much. Every vista has its 
picture, either a church, a monument, a palace, 
or a park. You range and range and seemingly 
never exhaust the possibilities of the city. If 
you pick out the green shade of the Prater on a 
sunny day you presently find yourself in the 
thick of life at the Wiirstl Prater, or Venedig in 
Wien, a glorified Coney Island, Atlantic City, 
Crystal Palace, and Vincennes gingerbread fair, 
without either ocean or board walk. But gaiety 
prevails. If you are in the mood historical you 
have a field to work that is practically inex- 
haustible. ^Esthetic cravings are satisfied by 
the superb architecture, the ceaseless music- 
making, the round of theatrical novelties — not 
to mention the artistic acting — and the royal 
museum, which houses so many old masters. 

Of modern Viennese painting I can't say so 
much ; however, tastes differ. I prefer the sim- 
plicities of Franz Defregger to the gorgeous 

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VIENNA 

arabesques of Hans Makart. The mixture of 
Celt, Roman, Slavic, and German in her veins 
has made Austria singularly sensitive to foreign 
influence. Under the Babenbergers she boasted 
a Walther von der Vogelweide, and such a dra- 
matic poet as Grillparzer or Anzengruber can 
hardly be passed by. She almost starved 
Beethoven, and by her neglect helped Hugo 
Wolf, the composer, into madness. If you are 
interested in the modern there is a gallery of 
young talent, largely derivative, I admit, but 
interesting. Arthur Schnitzler — whose work 
has thus far not been adequately interpreted in 
English — Hermann Bahr, Richard Beer-Hoff- 
man, the author of the drama Der Graf von 
Charolais, the clever novelist, FeHx Sal ten, Hugo 
von Hofmannsthal (Loris), the poet and libret- 
tist of several Richard Strauss operas; Stefan 
George, poet, are a few names I recall; and then 
there are the poet J. J. David, the poet and 
dramatist Gllicksmann of the Volkstheater, 
Karl Schoenherr, a Tyrolese, whose drama 
stirred all Austria (Glaube und Heimat), and 
many others. The special graciousness and 
charm that are characteristic of Vienna may be 
found best reflected in the writings of Arthur 
Schnitzler. 

For the sake of curiosity, I made a computa- 
tion of the number of fountains, parks, churches, 
etc., in Vienna. I discovered thirty-eight foun- 
tains, imposing ones, I need hardly remind you. 
The same figures cover the churches of every 

191 



VIENNA 

creed, and of monuments there are eighty, pub- 
lic parks thirty-nine, and I forget how many 
palaces. It is the gigantic scale on which the city 
is planned that impresses. London and Paris 
are at times stuffy, but the light and air of 
Vienna are so abundant that stuffiness is never 
experienced. I don't particularly admire the 
architecture of the residences; banal is the 
word that best describes these edifices, not 
always cheerful to gaze upon. There are too 
few first-class hotels; Berlin beats all Europe in 
its modern hotels, and Vienna is far behind 
Berlin in the matter of apartments. In the 
suburbs they are beginning to erect them. They 
are not as comfortable, as commodious, nor so 
cheap as in Berlin. In one I found that the 
steam heat never sent the thermometer above 
fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and despite the remon- 
strances of the tenants the landlord was obdu- 
rate in his refusal of more steam pressure. But 
chilly rooms, ill-lighted, are not confined to 
Vienna; London is as bad as Paris, and Berhn 
is the most comfortable in this respect. No 
doubt Vienna will march in the procession later. 
In the parks and public squares you see stat- 
ues erected to the memory of celebrated men: 
Beethoven (two), Brahms, Schubert, Bruckner, 
Anzengruber, Goethe, Grillparzer, Gutenberg, 
inventor of printing; Robert Hamerling, the 
poet; Josef Haydn, Theodore Korner, Lenau, 
poets; Makart, Schiller, Mozart, Strauss, and 
Lanner are represented, and with them an army 

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VIENNA 

of royal mediocrities and municipal celebrities. 
Think of the Central Cemetery, where is the 
empty grave of Mozart; where are the remains 
of Beethoven, Gluck, Franz Schubert, Johann 
Strauss, near his friend Brahms, and where lie 
such men as Von Suppe, Milloecker, Bruckner, 
Herbeck, Hugo Wolf, Makart, Clement, and 
the pedagogue Czerny! Vienna also honours 
Hebbel and Lenau in an appropriate manner. 
There is a Lisztgasse, named after the Hunga- 
rian composer, and it may be remembered that 
it was in Vienna that the youthful Chopin won 
his first triumphs outside of provincial Warsaw. 
There is a Beethovengang up on the Kahlen- 
berg, outside of the city, a shady walk as you 
ascend by the Schreiberbach, in which Bee- 
thoven often strolled, hatless, singing to himself 
the motives he was weaving in his skull. The 
Viennese of his days pronounced him half mad. 
Perhaps he was, but he was also Beethoven. 
From the famous Karl Goldmark, the most ven- 
erable of Austrian composers (since dead, 19 15), 
to the precocious composer, Erich Korngold, 
the chain of active musical effort is unbroken. 
Vienna is very musical, although I care less for 
its opera-house than I did in the days when 
Mahler and Weingartner reigned. 

Instead of beginning a chant royal of admira- 
tion for the cathedral, which is the ''star" of 
the sacerdotal architecture in Vienna, I prefer 
to speak of the Karlskirche on the Karlsplatz, 
possibly because its pompous splendour and com- 

193 



VIENNA 

manding position impress one more than the 
cathedral, too closely besieged by surrounding 
buildings. There can be no comparisons as to 
interiors — the miraculous altars and pulpits of 
the cathedral bear off all honours, and while the 
lace-like spires of the Votive Church are more 
attractive than the Karl's Church, the latter has 
an exotic semi-Asiatic exterior that fairly rivets 
the eye. It is named after its donor, the Em- 
peror Charles VI, and is a notable example of 
German baroque. It was erected 1 721-6, in 
commemoration of the extermination of the 
plague of 171 6. There is an oval cupola; spiral- 
shaped columns flank the main facade. They 
are ornamented with basso-relievos and lantern- 
crowned. A lunar-shaped portico. The reliefs 
on the Trojan pillars show scenes from the life 
of St. Carlo Borromeo by Mader and Mattielli. 
An imperial circle crowns them. Low bell- 
towers terminate on either side of the fagade, 
which form a vaulted entrance to the interior. 
There is a great marble altar with a statue of 
Borromeo. The frescoes are distinguished. 

I am not in the least tempted by the desire to 
tell you that Vienna was founded before the 
Christian era and was known during the first cen- 
tury A. D. as Vindobona, or that Marcus Aure- 
lius is said to have died there. Ah, these wise 
old guide-books ! — but I may dare to intimate 
that the present Vienna owes most of its munici- 
pal magnificence to the present Hapsburg, the 
beloved Kaiser, who mounted the throne in 1848, 

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VIENNA 

Franz Joseph I. (He at the present writing still 
smokes the long rat-tail cigars with a strong tang 
and drinks his glass of Pilsner daily.) He prac- 
tically rebuilt the city. 

In the Neuer Markt stands the old church of 
the Capuchins, Maria zu den Engeln, and its 
mortuary vaults hold much that is dear to the 
old Emperor: his murdered empress, Elizabeth; 
his ill-fated son, the Crown Prince Rodolph; the 
unfortunate Maximilian, once Emperor of Mex- 
ico, betrayed by the Emperor of the French, 
Napoleon III — in whose veins no Bonaparte 
blood flowed — also the tomb of the Duke of 
Reichstadt; a tablet to the memory of Peter 
Marcus Avenarius; and the sarcophagus of the 
Empress Maria Theresa. But tombs sadden; 
I prefer the light, and let us go out into the an- 
imated highways; let us go through the thriv- 
ing Graben, the high-water mark of Viennese 
business streets, and if I pause before some bril- 
liantly lighted cafe, arrested by the vision of 
pretty girls, the majority smoking innocuous 
cigarettes, don't blame me. All said and done, 
I am only an American avid of new sights and 
sounds, not to speak of new faces. 

IV 

And how about that famous walk? Isn't 
time to take it? Well, you start from the Step- 
phanplatz and you see the Stock im Eisen (a 
trunk of a tree studded with nails), said to mark 

195 



VIENNA 

the spot to which once upon a time the Vienna 
forest (Wiener Wald), extended; it is enclosed 
in a niche to which, so legend hath it, all jour- 
neymen locksmiths paid a visit before their 
Wander] ahre and drove a nail into the tree to 
spite the devil. 

On our way we pass the Mozarthof , a building 
erected in 1848 on the site of the house where 
Mozart died. The glorious cathedral, cele- 
brated in picture and prose, need not be here 
described. Nor the Graben. In the Hof are 
the War Office, the Credit Institute for Trade 
and Commerce, the Radetzky monument — do 
you remember in your childish years the stirring 
little Radetzky march, by the elder Strauss? 
It still tinkles in my ears to the tonality of D 
major. We see the palace of Count Harrach, 
the Scots Church, the fountain: then, through 
the Herrengasse, with its many public buildings, 
we achieve the imperial palace, the Hofburg — 
two monumental fountains, past the gateway 
to the Franzensplatz. 

Another big monument. A military band is 
playing. A fine rain is falling, but the place is 
black with people. We see the Rathhaus, the 
museums, the House of Parliament; we go to 
the Maximihanplatz and admire the Votive 
Church; look at the monument and the Stock 
Exchange and the university; then we stand 
amazed before the majestic proportions of the 
Hofburg Theater, whose entrance and stairway 
are the finest in Europe; admire the spacious 

196 



VIENNA 

Volksgarten, note the monument to the Empress 
EHzabeth, past the Volkstheater to the Burg- 
ring, with the pair of imperial museums, the 
Maria Theresa memorial, as far as the Opern- 
ring, on the right the Schillerplatz (Academy 
of Fine Arts, full of canvases); opposite the 
Goethe statue, a stout, mature gentleman in a 
badly fitting frock coat, and the opera-house, a 
very imposing structure. Continuing along the 
Karntnerring through the Kiinstlergasse we pass 
the home of the Musikverein and the Kunstler- 
haus on the Karlsplatz, which also holds the 
Polytechnic School; the Brahms monument is 
worth while studying; then you go across the 
Schwarzenbergplatz, where stands the palace of 
that name, to the Kolowratring — Vienna topo- 
graphically is like a circular saw — to the city 
park, with its numerous monuments, handsome 
Kursalon, and well-laid-out walks, back to the 
Kaiser Wilhelmring, where there are palaces, 
and on to the Stubenring, a museum of art and 
industry. As for the post-office, the Chamber 
of Commerce, the bridges crossing the arm of 
the Danube, the Tegetthoff monument, the 
Rotunda in the Prater, and the pleasant trip to 
the imperial palace of Schonbrunn — these are 
subjects that cannot be seen, much less dis- 
cussed, in a day. 

One thing is certain — the surroundings of 
Vienna are particularly beautiful, whether at 
Semmering or Baden, the Klosternburg or 
Grinzing, the Kahlenburg, Leopoldsburg, Mod- 

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VIENNA 

ling, Laxenburg at Franzenberg, or Mariazell. 
And how the town mice do visit their kinsmen 
in the country when the weather is fair ! And 
the Prater has only one rival in Europe as a 
driving resort, the Bois de Boulogne. Among 
the private art collections, that of the Prince 
Liechtenstein is the most celebrated. There is 
a great Frans Hals, the portrait of Willem van 
Huythuysen, and Rubenses, Rembrandts, and 
Van Dycks of prime quality. Count Harrach has 
an excellent collection; also Count Schoborn, and 
in Count Czernin's palace I found the greatest 
Vermeer, said to be the painter's atelier with the 
portrait of his wife and himself. 

In the Albertina, the library of Archduke 
Albert, there are fifty thousand volumes, an ex- 
traordinary collection of drawings and engrav- 
ings (autograph drawings by Diirer and Raphael, 
the Green Passion by the Nuremberg master), 
and two hundred thousand copperplates, in 
which is the finest work of Marc Antonio Rai- 
mondi. I only mention these treasures, not to 
emulate the catalogues but because I saw them 
and admired. In the modern gallery I didn't 
find much that I liked, except a grand Van Gogh. 
There are complete collections of Egyptian 
antiquities and the Imperial Art History Mu- 
seum. They must detain us. Also a Museum 
of Weapons and Armour. 

In the picture-gallery of the Imperial Museum 
there are nine authentic canvases by Velasquez, 
a Madonna by Raphael (his Florentine period), 

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VIENNA 

numerous early Italian masters, Giorgione's 
Geometricians, Dlirer's masterpiece The Trinity, 
and some of the best Holbeins I ever saw (por- 
trait of Derick Tybis); the Cranachs are dis- 
tinguished, while Rubens and Van Dyck are 
abundantly represented. The old masters of 
the Netherlands, Italy, and elsewhere are of the 
best quality. If you made a trip to Vienna only 
to see its art treasures you would not be wasting 
your time. For me Count Czernin's Vermeer 
will ever prove a lodestone. 

I have only skimmed the surface. Instead 
of spending all your vacation in Berlin or Paris 
or London, take the Oriental express to Vienna 
and enjoy that glorious city. Besides, Budapest 
is but five hours down the Danube, and while 
I never met a Viennese who was enthusiastic 
over Hungary, its capital deserves a visit. Of 
all the European cities (after New York, if I 
may be permitted to perpetrate a mild Celtic 
bull, for New York is becoming more European 
than Europe) I best like Vienna, the magnificent. 



199 



II 

PRAGUE 

When the Bohemian composer, the late Dr. 
Antonin Dvorak, with the much-accented name, 
was director of the National Conservatory two 
decades ago, I often talked with him about his 
native land; above all, of its music. For 
Dvorak there was a musical god, and he was 
Bedrich Smetana; Bohemia's greatest musician, 
the composer of the opera Dalibor, of the string 
quartet Aus Meinem Leben, of many songs and 
symphonies. 

One work of his had always piqued my ad- 
miration, a symphonic poem, with several sec- 
tions, one called Vltava — the Bohemian name 
for the river Moldau, which winds its shining 
length through the city of Prague; another 
Vysehrad, the name of the ancient fortress in 
the same place. 

But Vltava caught my ear. I remember ask- 
ing Dr. Dvorak to pronounce it for me, which he 
willingly did, as he disliked his beloved river 
to bear the heavy Teutonic appellation of Mol- 
dau. Like the majority of his countrymen, the 

200 



PRAGUE 

composer of the New World Symphony was not 
enthusiastic on the subject of the Germans. 
There is a reason for this antipathy, as we shall 
later see. 

The music of Smetana for me was merged in 
that blessed word Vltava, surely as blessed as 
the old lady's Mesopotamia, or as was the Sus- 
quehanna for Robert Louis Stevenson. 

And from sounding Vltava to myself I longed 
to see the precious river and the historical city 
of Prague, built on both its banks. I often 
sought a verbal setting for Prague : Prague, the 
picturesque; poetic Prague; but after I had lived 
there I found the precise combination — Prague, 
the dramatic. 

Prague is the most original city in Europe, 
not perhaps so startling or so melodramatic as 
Toledo in Spain, yet more original; and that it 
has preserved this originaHty is remarkable, if 
you consider that pretty, placid, modern Dres- 
den is only four hours away, and farther down 
the map lies Vienna. 

Now, Toledo is isolated. Many travellers go 
to Madrid and Seville, but do not dream of vis- 
iting the town perched high over the Tagus, 
whereas Prague is a stopping-off spot, the Slavic 
city farthest west, the gateway to the Slavic 
lands. Cosmopolitan, nevertheless it has pre- 
served its proud individual profile. 

The first time I passed it I was en route for 
Vienna and Budapest. In my ears the mu- 
sical sequence of words reproachfully hummed: 

20I 



PRAGUE 

Vltava, Vysehrad, Vysehrad, Vltava! and I grew 
indignant when the railway guard pointed out the 
''Moldau." The cathedral and castles grouped 
on the hill made a fascinating silhouette against 
the sky-line ; yet I stayed in the train, from sheer 
inertia, I suppose, and it was several years after 
that I paid the city my initial visit. I could not 
forget the alluring prospect of wood, of noble 
architecture; above all, of the sanguinary pages 
of its history. Arthur Symons put it well when 
he wrote that to a Bohemian "Prague is still the 
epitome of the history of his country; he sees 
it as a man sees the woman he loves, with her 
first beauty, and -he loves it, as a man loves a 
woman, more for what she has suffered." It 
was love at first sight when I peeped at Prague 
from a moving train. 

Who hasn't heard of the Bridge of Prague (the 
Karlsbrlicke), and who of the older generation 
cannot recall that thunderous pianoforte piece 
known as The Battle of Prague? It even 
smote upon the tender ears of Thackeray. To- 
day I haven't the remotest notion of its com- 
poser, nor do I care to know his name; such 
music. The Maiden's Prayer included, is im- 
mortal. But I always puzzled over the par- 
ticular battle this particular morceau is sup- 
posed to musically illustrate. Probably the 
fierce one of 1757, and a bloody battle it was, 
with the Germans. 

I also made the astounding discovery that 
Prague is spelled ''Praha" by the natives, pro- 

202 



PRAGUE 

nounced Prah, and that the famous Prager 
Schinken (Prague ham) is not so good in the 
city from which it takes its name; also that 
Pilsen, a few hours away, is spelled Plzen, and 
that its magic amber brew tastes better in 
Prague. Verily, you may exclaim with George 
Borrow: ''Those who wish to regale on good 
Cheshire cheese must not come to Chester, no 
more than those who wish first-rate coffee must 
go to Mocha." 

Tossing the proverbial advice of guides over 
my left shoulder for luck, I left the Blauer 
Stern on the Hybernska Ulice — the words 
begin to blister your eyes — went through the 
powder tower opposite the hotel, and by the 
Celetana place reached the Rathhaus, or Town 
Hall, passed the historic Tein (or Tyn) Church; 
also the old Jewish cemetery, and presently 
found myself on the river's edge at the Cech 
Bridge, a modern affair, quite wide, flanked by 
tall columns at both ends and leading to the 
delectable territory which I had earlier viewed 
from afar. It was only the night before that I 
had arrived from Vienna, and I was too tired 
to rove about; besides, Prague is not a brilliant 
night city. The Graben, or main thoroughfare, 
is not wonderfully illuminated, and the inhab- 
itants retire early, or seem to; at all events, I 
preferred a good rest to noctambulistic prowl- 
ings. 

The morning proved cloudy. Rain was im- 
minent. And, not in too high feather, I was 

203 



PRAGUE 

on the point of crossing the bridge when a polite 
official held out his hand for a tiny toll. At this 
juncture, and as I searched for small change, 
the sun stabbed through the mist high on the 
hills the imperial palace and the Hradschin, or 
capitol (on the Hradcany), the pinnacles of St. 
Vitus's Cathedral (Veitdom), the four Ottokar 
towers, and two towers of St. George swam 
gloriously in the air above me, a miracle of 
tender rose and marble white with golden spots 
of sunshine that would have made envious 
Claude Monet. 

The spectacle was of brief duration, for the 
day cleared, and as I mounted the broad road 
leading to the pile of masonry I could note the 
solidity of what was once ancient Prague, its 
impregnability in case of siege, and its extraor- 
dinary romantic beauty. 

It is the lodestar of the city. No matter your 
position, your eye finally rests on the Hradcany. 
I went to the Schloss Belvedere, and from its 
terrace I had another view of the cathedral. 
Close by it is more wonderful, especially the 
apses. From the Karl's Bridge you see it in 
profile; from the Marienschanz it is not so ef- 
fective. But always it dominates the city, it is 
the leitmotif in an architectural symphony; yet 
never has it since showed for me such supernal 
beauty as that first morning when the sun 
had decomposed its massive lengths and trans- 
formed its masonry into a many-hued opales- 
cent vision. 

204 



PRAGUE 

I confess that I was rather disappointed with 
the celebrated Chapel of St. Wenceslas (Wen- 
zel) in the cathedral. It was built about 1360, 
and there is a display of Bohemian jewels that 
make a garish impression. The frescoes are 
dim, and the little picture depicting the mur- 
der of the saint — his amiable brother, Boleslay, 
was the assassin — is said to be of Cranach's 
school, but it is mediocre. A ring in the door 
was grasped by Wenceslas when he was slain. 

The church is crammed with the bones of 
buried kings. The shrine of St. Nepomuc (St. 
John Nepomucane) is of more interest. It is 
composed of nearly two tons of silver. Modern 
iconoclasts deny the existence of Nepomuc, but 
there is his tomb, and, if my memory serves me 
right, I think there are rehcs of his in Phila- 
delphia, where they are said to have worked 
miracles. 

However, I was not sorry to leave the cathe- 
dral after vespers, for the air within was heavy. 
I descended by way of the Mala Strana (Klein- 
seite), enjoyed the view of the Hasenburg, with 
its lofty tower, then crossed the Karlsbriicke, 
counted its many stone saints and heroes, and 
finally reached the Town Hall (Rathhaus) in 
time to see the old and curious clock of the 
Erkeskapelle perform its little play for the 
benefit of a throng of peasants and others. 

It was made in 1490 by a patient, pious, and 
ingenious person called Magister Hanus. It an- 
nounces the hours and the rising and setting of 

205 



PRAGUE 

sun and moon. Over the clock is a little win- 
dow, in which the figures of Christ and his apos- 
tles appear when the hour strikes. The best 
part of the show was, of course, the people who 
with serious expression watched for the clock- 
maker's puppets as if assisting at a solemn ser- 
vice. I told myself that the age of faith is not 
dead; that whether Hussitek or Catholic, the 
Bohemians always were, and still are, of a re- 
ligious nature. On Sunday the churches are 
packed, and if the citizen and his family enjoy 
themselves in the afternoon, vespers show no 
falling off in attendance; indeed, the favourite 
promenade after the midday dinner and before 
the afternoon coffee is up the Hradcany Hill, 
there to visit either Sankt Veit's Cathedral or St. 
George and attend the vespers service. Along 
the river bank is another favourite promenade, 
or up to the Star Hunting Lodge, where in 1620 
was fought the battle of the White Mountain. 

These same people, despite the Germanic 
strain, are as Slavic as the Hungarians are Mag- 
yar. Since the revival of the national tongue, 
in the early part of the nineteenth century, the 
speech is preferably Czech (or Cech, as they 
spell it), German not being so universal as it 
was. All the storekeepers speak German, Eng- 
lish, and French, but interrogate the average 
man or woman in the streets and you will seldom 
be answered in anything but Czech. This is a 
gratifying evidence of reviving patriotism. 

It must not be forgotten that Prague, as 

206 



PRAGUE 

Count Liitzow has pointed out in his valuable 
books on Bohemia, "is now an Austrian provin- 
cial town, though Bohemia has always been 
officially described as a kingdom, not as a prov- 
ince." Reserved to the point of reticence even 
when you are made free of their homes and wel- 
comed with unaffected hospitality, the Bohe- 
mian is persistently Slav. He speaks with 
affection of the aged Emperor Joseph, but he 
does not in his heart of hearts love Austria. 

Centuries of warfare have made him both 
hardy and suspicious. He will fight at the drop 
of the handkerchief, but will hold his tongue if 
you mention the Tripartite Kingdom, which is 
as it should be. The Hungarians are less pru- 
dent. 

I walked much in Prague town, old and new. 
I never saw so many pretty girls elsewhere, 
either in Vienna or Budapest, which is saying 
a lot. Now, since the Bohemian emigration to 
the United States is considerable, the peculiar 
t>T3e of beauty may be familiar in our coast 
cities. Not always brunette, though, as a rule, 
these young girls, chiefly of the peasant and 
poorest classes, are noted for their brilliant col- 
ouring, eyes as magnificent as those of Tuscan 
belles, strong, well-knit figures, and in bearing 
extremely proud. Splendid, is the comment 
you make as at eve or early in the morning hun- 
dreds and hundreds of these healthy creatures 
pass you to and from work. Saturday evening 
the Graben is crowded with them shopping, 

207 



PRAGUE 

coquetting in anything but a subtle fashion, 
gossiping, and thoroughly enjoying their holi- 
day. 

The hotels in Prague are second-class, the 
cafes, with one exception, not of the sort you 
have so regretfully left in Vienna, but there are 
compensations. The cuisine, while its chief 
ingredients are Austrian, is Bohemian. There 
is a Czechic nuance in the pastry and I have 
seldom tasted such apple tarts, mufhns stuffed 
with poppy-seed jam, dumplings of cream cheese, 
crumpets unparalleled, ham, egg, cream, and 
apricot jam. A Bohemian cook "cuts up a 
bird, spices its liver in a casserole, boils its back 
and serves it with rice, spices its breast and 
bakes it, and makes a brown stew of its giblets 
and feet." I quote from a well-known author- 
ity. And I have enjoyed just such "golly- 
gubs" as the little Bohemian Hungry Henriettas 
would call their titbits at the Blue Star, where, 
frankly speaking, the cooking is better than any 
I tasted at Berlin in vaunted restaurants. 

As for the Pilsen Ur quell — and you can't go 
to Prague without drinking its chief beverage 
- — I can only say as a humble admirer of the 
liquid that makes pleased the palate but does 
not fatten, that not in Pilsen, its home, is the 
brew so artfully presented. 

One night I went down — or up — the 
Graben to a narrow street, well-nigh an alley, 
called the Brentgasse, there to find a restaurant 
consisting of several small rooms, the ceilings 

208 



PRAGUE 

low, the tables bare of linen, a huge stove in a 
corner producing the necessary heat, and the 
ventilation not very good. I gave my order 
and it took exactly eight minutes for me to get 
what I had asked for. But it was worth wait- 
ing for a year. At a table hard by sat a group — 
three officers, two clergymen, and one civilian. 
They spoke low and earnestly. I suppose they 
took at least an hour to empty one glass, yet 
that glass of Pilsen looked as if it were newly 
born. As they conversed in Bohemian, of which 
I understand one word, ''Plzen," I never en- 
joyed a pleasanter hour. 

Sensible people, temperate in eating and 
drinking, are the people of Prague. 

The newly built Representatives House, next 
to the powder tower, is a gorgeous building, 
with flaring hghts, thronged with coffee drinkers 
between five and seven in the evening, and con- 
taining an excellent restaurant, the best outside 
of the Blauer Stern. I should like to print a 
specimen menu card for your edification, but I 
fear printers and proof-readers would rebel. I 
had an Omleta royal, a Fogos fish, a Telec filet 
specarky, and Ledovy creme, ending with an 
Americky compot, and, of course, some Austrian 
light wine. 

Oh, the joy of roaming at night in a dark, 
strange city ! I often found myself in quiet, 
mean streets, the windows and doors of the 
houses as if sealed, the silence of death about all. 
However, I believe I did overhear snoring on 

209 



PRAGUE 

more than one occasion, a hint that I did not 
fail to take. 

Once in my hotel I disdained the snail-like 
''lift" and went to the second floor, perhaps not 
without panting, but happy when I could find 
my room. Fancy about a mile of dimly lit cor- 
ridors, freakish twists and turns, sudden little 
staircases that lead to sprained ankles or else 
blasphemous ejaculations; then another vista 
of doors, with boots, secret-looking, sinister 
boots, in front of them; comes a familiar curve, 
and you are not at home, though in a hallway 
large enough to hold your trunks and a horse and 
carriage besides, but in a safe harbour at last. 

The old-fashioned bathroom, with a tub as 
deep as a well, as big as the Giant's Causeway, 
tells you that you are not in America but in the 
land — meaning Europe — where bathtubs are 
not taken seriously, where, indeed, no man in 
love with art will sell his spiritual birthright for 
the sake of a bathtub; where — and then you 
fall asleep to dream the battle of Prague and its 
cannonading. 

But there are plenty of sights left for the soft 
daylight. If you should happen to be in the 
mood antiquarian or ethnographical there is 
the oldest Jewish synagogue in Prague, built, 
so tradition hath it, by the first fugitives from 
Jerusalem after its destruction. Certainly it is 
known to have been rebuilt in 1338, a date suf- 
ficiently far off to gladden the heart of the lover 
of mould. 

210 



PRAGUE 

A large flag testifies to the bravery of the Jews 
during the siege of Prague by the Swedes in 1648 
and was presented by Ferdinand III. The 
Jewish burial-ground near by is a quaint spot. 
It has not been used for over a century. There 
are literally thousands of tombs covered with 
vegetation, many of which bear either the names 
of the occupants in Jewish script or else the 
symbol of the tribe to which the deceased be- 
longed. A strange and not too cheerful place. 

The view from the Palacky Quay (named 
after the great Bohemian statesman) is pictur- 
esque; bridges, palaces, and churches lie in the 
perspective. 

The Bohemian National Theatre is pleasantly 
situated. The theatrical performances are high 
class. Sometimes Dalibor is a favourite — 
Dalibor, after whom is named the Daliborka 
town, was a knight who was in revolt, impris- 
oned, and beheaded. He was a viohnist and 
became the theme of many romantic tales. He 
is also the hero of a novel by Wenceslas Vlcek. 

At a concert in the Representatives House I 
heard a programme consisting of a scherzo by 
Dvorak, a symphony by Smetana, a new sym- 
phonic poem entitled Prague by Josef Suk, one 
of the most gifted of contemporary Bohemian 
composers, and a work by Sdenko Fibich (a 
much-neglected composer in America). Truly a 
feast for patriots as well as the musical. 

I may say without fear of denial that the 
Bohemians are musical to the pitch of exalta- 

211 



PRAGUE 

tion. They dearly love a good fiddler. And 
wasn't Prague the very hub of violin playing, 
for there the pedagogue Sevcik has turned out 
such pupils as the faulty faultless Kubelik, 
Kocian, and how many others? The Sevcik 
school is in Vienna at the present. 

And now I approach the more serious, nay, 
tragic, side of my little recital: the history of 
the religious wars which for so many years 
ravaged the fair land of Bohemia — a more 
romantic-appearing land does not exist, not even 
Ireland — spilled cataracts of blood divided 
father and son, daughter from mother, put a 
curse on progress, and all this devastating misery 
for what? For something that to-day has 
as much interest or value as certain mediaeval 
scholastic discussions regarding the number of 
devils that dance on the head of a needle. 

What a waste of human life for naught ! I 
remember once some one saying to me: ''Relig- 
ion is made for mankind, not mankind for re- 
ligion," which very liberal opinion coming from 
the mouth of a wise and pious person caused me 
to stare. I have thought of this remark each 
time I read the history of Prague, and I have 
wondered what would have been its history if 
the Huss embroilment had been left out by the 
gods, on whose laps are shaped the destiny of 
nations. But such a thought is worse than 
futile. 

When Kaiser Franz Joseph visited Prague as 
a young archduke he said: "It is impossible to 

212 



PRAGUE 

conceive a history of Bohemia from which the 
Hussite wars are excluded." He was right. 
Like the Irish, the Bohemian is a theological 
man. He loves the knotty discussions that 
lead nowhere, or else to the battle-field; he is 
stubborn, without the natural fund of humour 
the Celt possesses, but he is as quarrelsome, and 
no quarrel is as attractive as one over doctrinal 
issues. 

I said just now that the Huss-Wyclifife- 
Catholic- Church controversy seems futile in 
the light of modern reason, but some centuries 
ago it was the very bone and sinew of the Bo- 
hemian race. For John Huss or against John 
Huss; that was the question, and the theme 
that stirred so mightily an entire race then is 
bound to stir us now. Every dog has its day. 
John Huss, who set Prague by the ears, was not 
even born there, nor did he die there. Be- 
trayed by the lying promises of King Sigismund, 
he was burned at the stake in Constance (No- 
vember, 1414). 

I found the speech of the Austrian Emperor 
quoted above in Count Liitzow's exceedingly 
readable book about Prague. Not only a pa- 
triotic Bohemian, Liitzow, who writes English as 
if it were his mother tongue, he is also a mem- 
ber of an old and noble family (you surely re- 
member the legend of Liitzow's Wild Hunt), dis- 
tinguished in the history of his race. He has, 
therefore, written with sympathy and an inti- 
mate knowledge peculiarly valuable to those 

213 



PRAGUE 

foreigners for whom the larger works on the 
subject are naturally inaccessible. 

He tells us in his story of Bohemia of the 
legendary Libussa, who succeeded her father 
Krok, or Crosus, on the throne, although she 
was the youngest daughter. Finding her task 
as a ruler difficult, she decided to call in the aid 
of a husband, and to accomplish this she prophe- 
sied to her malcontent councillors. Pointing to 
a distant hill, she said: "Behind these hills is a 
small river called Belina, and on its bank a farm 
named Stadic. Near that farm is a field, and 
in that field your future ruler is ploughing 
with two oxen marked with various spots. His 
name is Premsyl and his descendants will rule 
over you for ever. Take my horse and follow 
him; he will lead you to the spot." 

This beats the story of Cincinnatus. But 
the lady prophesied truly. Premsyl was found 
(what he thought of the affair has never been 
told) and crowned, and later his queen built 
Prague on the hill called Hradcany. (So Prague 
may be claimed as a petticoat creation.) 

If a political party grew too powerful or too 
odious in the old days, its principal members 
were usually enticed into the palace chamber 
in the liill under the pretext of an important 
council and then suddenly thrown from a win- 
dow to the moat or ditch below. This is called 
defenestration — which sounds better than it is. 

In the Hradcany castle on May 23, 16 18, sev- 
eral royal officials were pitched through the 

214 



PRAGUE 

window. Oddly enough they were not killed, 
and their escape was pronounced a miracle by 
their pious adherents. 

But let us return to a pleasanter theme. I 
visited the Clementinum, occupied by the Jesuit 
fathers, which is rich in manuscripts and pos- 
sesses a library of nearly two hundred and fifty 
thousand volumes; and I visited the Rudolph- 
inum, a stately structure built in 1884. It 
contains two concert rooms, a conservatory of 
music, and a picture-gallery, the latter hous- 
ing much mediocre art, also a few excellent 
examples by Rembrandt, Rubens, Terburg, 
Watteau, Holbein. 

Bohemians wonder why their rarely beauti- 
ful city is not visited by more Americans. The 
Germans overflow the town, as do the Austrians. 
Arthur Symons discovered it for the English in 
his exquisite epitome of travel. Cities, but Amer- 
icans prefer the blandishments of Berlin, Paris, 
or London. 

I think I can give one reason for this avoid- 
ance of a spot that is both a sacred shrine of 
history and a living witness to the magic of 
natural beauty. It is this: To reach Prague 
you must, if you come from America, travel 
via Berhn, Dresden, over Bodenbach, and the 
train service, according to our latter-day de- 
mands, is not up to the average. Stuffy car- 
riages, whether first or second class, poor res- 
taurant cars, no de luxe trains, and every one 
a crawler. 

215 



PRAGUE 

Some day I hope the German and Austrian 
railway officials will realise what a jewel they 
are neglecting, and that we may go from Berlin 
to Prague in five hours instead of seven, and in 
new coaches with a decent dining-car attached. 
But in any case Prague is worth the bother 
getting there. 



216 



Ill 

LITTLE HOLLAND 
I 

ROTTERDAM 

It is raining in Rotterdam. But you are not 
melancholy. From a balcony at the rear of the 
old hotel you view with joy a wide canal. On 
it float two or three flat-bottomed boats. You 
have been surfeited for days with the ocean, 
with the round cupped horizon; here is water 
again, but civilised and restrained by the arts 
of man. Therefore the rain matters little. It 
is not a heavy downpour, only a misty, per- 
vasive wet that adds to the intimate quahty 
of the cityscape. One of the canal-boats has 
just discharged a cargo of peat-bog; not a clean 
job. The bargemen have gone away; the fiery- 
tempered little dog of the man and woman who 
live on board barks at canine passers-by, and 
the flat brick facades of the warehouses opposite 
recall certain streets in old Philadelpliia. The 
architecture is the same: the dull dark brick 
picked out with marble, the low stoop of stone 
or marble, the air of exaggerated cleanliness, 

217 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

and the homelike atmosphere. You could swear 
you were walking along the wharfs of the 
Delaware River as they must have looked 
about 1850. But the odour is different. It is 
not at all Pennsylvanian. The moment the 
Hook of Holland is sighted from your steamer 
the specific Dutch smell begins. It is tarry, 
fishy, swampy, and not without acerbity. When 
you walk along some antique gracht (canal) the 
odour becomes malodorous. But we shall later 
return to this ever-present question. Let us 
look at the boats. 

The man is preparing for Sunday. While he 
sluices the deck with water drawn from the 
canal by bucket, his wife hangs out the family 
wash to dry. It is not large. She has dipped 
it into some yellow stuff and it is as white as 
snow that has been trampled on. No sympathy 
need be wasted upon this stout, good-natured 
Dutch woman. No cohort of suffragettes could 
ever convince her that a woman's duty was 
aught else but to cook and wash for her husband 
and to bear him children. He works eighteen 
hours out of the twenty-four; why shouldn't 
she? There is no woman question in Holland. 
There is only the baby question. Large fam- 
ilies abound, and if wages were higher and gin 
dearer happiness would be universal. As it is, 
the poorer class seems content. This particular 
boatman and his wife had a crew of children 
with them, tow-headed youngsters, boys and 
girls who when ranged on deck for the midday 

218 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

soup looked like a row of organ-pipes. Little 
wonder the rain could not spoil the picture for 
the pilgrim. 

It is a pity that so many Americans entering 
Holland by the Holland-American Line do not 
remain longer at Rotterdam. There are many 
sights, many beautiful views from the top of 
the White House, and the enormous vitality of 
the city life impresses one as nowhere else in 
Holland, not in Amsterdam itself. Indeed, as 
a port, Rotterdam has quite outdistanced the 
mother capital and is causing Antwerp to look 
sharply after its own business. The White 
House is the tallest building in the country and 
was built on the profits of American oil. Ten 
stories high, its foundations are necessarily deep, 
for the soil is treacherous and swallows up 
wooden piles Hke quicksand. From the top you 
may see The Hague, only a half-hour away, 
Hook of Holland, Dordrecht, Gouda — where 
the meadow cows still wear coverings as noted 
by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus — Delft, and 
about half of Holland. But the most inspiring 
spectacle is the river Maas winding its silvery 
way to the sea, bearing every variety of craft 
from a steel steamship to the tiniest fisherman's 
coracle; above all, American petroleum tank 
steamers. By no means as grandiose as New 
York Harbour, the Rotterdam haven, with its 
bridges, its network of canals, its shipping; and 
the ceaseless play of light and shade on the 
many-coloured objects, the vivid green of the 

219 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

islets, the low-lying, lazily moving fleecy cloud 
boulders, the bustle and hammering, shrieking of 
steam-whistles form a distinctive picture. 

As for the churches, St. Lawrence leading in 
interest, the Stock Exchange (Beurs), the various 
public edifices, the private residences, and the 
historical monuments, these are matters best 
left to Baedeker. A first visit to this fascinat- 
ing country should dispose of all such neces- 
sary though fatiguing attractions. Traversing 
mouldy palaces, churches, and other damp, dis- 
agreeable buildings has a charm for the new- 
comer. There is another Holland, however, the 
Holland of glorious pictures, the Holland of by- 
ways, odd corners, queer, unexpected alleys far 
from the noisy centres, where A. d. 1909 sud- 
denly becomes 1609, where groups of industrious 
humans live and die without ever getting farther 
away from home than the zoological garden. 

The much-talked-of native costume you sel- 
dom see in Rotterdam. The canal-boat people 
dress in sombre garments, sailors are the same 
the world over, and the business men are just 
what you expect. Holland can boast of long- 
legged men. The proverbial little Dutchman, 
thick as a hogshead, is not nearly so prevalent 
as you think. Tall, broad-shouldered men wear- 
ing on their small heads hats too small for 
harmony hurriedly pass by, swinging the inev- 
itable cane. They are warmly clothed for Sep- 
tember, but the late afternoon brings dampness, 
the evening coolness. Every one who wishes 

220 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

to see, or to be seen, sits at the tables in the cafe 
terraces. They drink beer, excellent imported 
Pilsner, Amstel, or Heineken. Yet one cannot 
call the Dutch a nation of beer drinkers. The 
climate does not invite the thirst of the Teuton. 
Just as their existence is a long battle with the 
invading sea, so the chill of the air, omnipresent 
the hottest days of July, must be battled with, 
and gin is the chief weapon. The juice of the 
juniper berry is popular. A Dutch American 
shook his fist as we passed Schiedam on the 
steamer, declaring that the city was the devil's 
distillery; but gin is not such a curse as has 
been asserted. The poor man who earns ten to 
fifteen florins a week, or the dock labourers who 
earn much more, drink their gin, too often on 
an empty stomach. Nevertheless, Holland is 
a fairly temperate nation. In Rotterdam we 
saw one drunken man in three days, and he 
was celebrating of a Saturday night. His wife, 
shamefaced at the public disgrace, supported 
him as he stumbled, cursed, and roared. A 
great crowd followed, jeering. We asked a cafe 
waiter if it was a common occurrence. He 
replied in the negative, but a companion waiter 
shook his head affirmatively. When doctors 
disagree it is well to strike a happy balance. 

Amusing, and also sad, were the antics of a 
girl aged about six, who led a band of desperate 
babies in petticoats in a charge upon every 
stranger who sat on the cafe terrace. She 
might have stepped from either a Holbein or a 

221 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

Hals canvas. The round head, the thick neck, 
ash-blond hair, cheeks loaded as if with patches 
of paint, sharp little beady eyes, with a stout 
body, strong hands and dirty — the rascal sim- 
ply caught the eye and held it because of her 
health, humour, and audacity. She came fairly 
by her temperament, as her father had spent 
nearly thirty years of his forty in jail, not for 
thievery, but brutality and a too-ready knife. 
Strong as a buffalo, he saw red when a policeman 
passed. Gin was the mainspring. Ten myr- 
midons of the law it took to subdue him a few 
years ago, and he contrived against such odds 
to snatch a sword from one of them and to stab 
the man. This Hercules of the back alley has 
a pretty wife. He beats her, of course, and she 
adores him, for he is handsome and good-tem- 
pered when he isn't drinking. Only he drinks 
whenever he can. His daughter is promising. 
She begs, insults the folk that give her pennies, 
and makes faces at the diners. Her mother in- 
dolently follows her, but the brat always evades 
her. It is easy to predict her future. 

Bumping the boompjes is a pleasing game in 
Rotterdam. These docks are imposing and 
picturesque, but if you ride you are shaken to 
your very centre. Only Dutch spines can en- 
dure without quailing these wheels without tires 
which rumble around the town. For the rubber 
tire you must hire a taxicab; there are plenty 
and at a cheap tariff. That stony-hearted 
mother. Oxford Street, so eloquently hailed by 

222 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

De Quincey, is tenderer than the streets of 
Holland, which are better suited to the hoofs 
of oxen than to the heels of mankind. Belgian 
blocks are as asphalt in comparison. After an 
hour's ramble your head resounds like a hollow 
copper kettle; this is caused by the vibrations 
of your suffering toes. Until the pneumatic 
tire is adopted in the larger cities of Holland we 
refuse to believe them anything but provincial. 
The Sabbath is observed in Rotterdam; that 
is, people go to church in the morning, walk 
in the afternoon, visit the theatres and cafes 
in the evening. Overwhelming gaiety there is 
none, yet no sign of the moroseness we have 
been taught to look for in the character of the 
Dutch. They are a sober, self-contained, hard- 
headed people in business, but they relax when 
that business is transacted. Pious they are, 
whether Roman Catholics, Protestants, or He- 
brews. Their Sunday is by no means of the 
Glasgow or London sort, and might shock Sab- 
batarians, innocent as it is. The servant-girl 
in all her glory hangs on the arm of her soldier, 
or else sits in a Bodega drinking a little glass of 
cherry brandy. The air is full of bluish tobacco 
smoke; nowhere else are cigars so good or so 
cheap. The Dutch colonies supply Sumatra 
tobacco, and one may puff at a five-cent cigar 
(Dutch money; in ours two cents) without 
tasting a stogie or a German cabbage. Havana 
cigars are equally low in proportion. A Bock, 
a Henry Clay, an Upmann, the kind for which 

223 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

you pay twenty-five to forty cents apiece in the 
United States, you may enjoy at twelve, fifteen, 
or twenty cents, American money. All the men 
and boys smoke in Holland. Fancy a staid 
farther sitting at a table in the park, he with a 
cigar, his boy of ten with a long clay pipe ! The 
schoolboys use cigarettes as freely as the Amer- 
ican boy his marbles. And the tobacco seems 
to agree with the Dutch chaps as do the schnapps 
and the smell of the brackish canal waters. 

The Boysmans Museum is an amiable prepa- 
ration for the great feast of pictures at The 
Hague, Haarlem, and Amsterdam. The usual 
Dutch artists figure in the catalogue. There 
are no startling masterpieces, though Roger van 
der Weyden's Apostle John is worth studying. 
Three Jacob Ruysdaels, two Hobbemas, a cap- 
ital Van der Neer, some Mauves and modern 
landscapes, a Vermeer and KHnkenberg's view 
of the pretty Vijver at The Hague, and Jong- 
kind's moonlight view make up, with the Maes 
and Van der Heists and Flincks and many 
print and flower pieces, a pleasing if not dis- 
tinguished collection. The portrait of his father 
by Rembrandt is a boyish essay of historical 
interest. Rembrandt's unfinished allegorical 
painting (probably begun in 1648) is not par- 
ticularly striking. 

The Dutch are not phlegmatic. This state- 
ment may be as trite as that the Dutch have 
captured Holland, yet it may be a novelty to 
many. Among the polders, out in the fishing 

224 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

islands, and the farther you go, Friesland, Zee- 
land, old Dutch characteristics may persist like 
the old dress, but in the towns and cities the 
modern Dutchman is far from being phlegmatic. 
He is rather vivacious. He moves rapidly, 
speaks rapidly, and indulges in gestures. He 
burns his own smoke better than the Italians, 
but he is not the morose, pipe-smoking, senten- 
tious individual you read of; and the women, 
who dress as modishly as they know how, they, 
too, are mobile, swift in gait and speech. Go 
into any of the principal cafes of Amsterdam be- 
tween five and seven o'clock in the evening, into 
Krasnopolsky's or the American, you seem to 
be in Berlin or Munich. At the Cafe Riche it 
is more Parisian. The man of Amsterdam 
works too hard; his hours are long and his 
relaxations are few, for here commerce rules. 
Nervous diseases, a Dutch specialist told us, 
are on the increase. The business man takes 
his coffee or his consommation. A theatregoer, 
a lover of music, he is nevertheless a great home 
body. Tea drinking after dinner is the rule in 
Holland. Every one who has been lucky enough 
to get a glimpse of home life will tell you of the 
cordiality, the hospitality, the genuine interest 
with which a stranger from overseas is made 
welcome. They like the Americans. We are 
in their eyes their country's grown-up children. 
Pictures of the Half Moon and of New York 
harbour are displayed in numerous shops. The 
reciprocity is sincere. 

225 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

n 

THROUGH THE CANALS 

If ever there will be such a social reconstruc- 
tion as the United States of Europe, then surely 
The Hague ought to be the capital. It is both 
charming and cosmopolitan. It possesses the 
intimacy of a little Holland city and in it is 
sounded the note, though faintly, of a Weltstadt. 
It is a garden dotted with villas, and they say 
that every Hollander with means looks forward 
to dying in this delectable spot almost within 
sight and sound of the North Sea. It com- 
mands a position between Rotterdam and Am- 
sterdam, and in atmosphere is different from 
both. The summer residence of the court, in 
name at least — Queen Wilhelmina prefers Het 
Loo palace near Apeldoorn, for years, the ac- 
credited capital, if not actually so — The Hague, 
with its parks, its forest, its stately houses on 
canals seldom troubled by commerce, and its 
excellent hotels, is the least Dutch city in the 
country and one in which life goes upon oiled 
wheels except in the noisy business district. To 
summer there in one of the walled-in villas along 
the old road to Scheveningen, take a daily swim 
at that pretty seaside resort, and sleep under the 
immemorial elms undisturbed by anything but 
the diabolical baker boy in the early morning 
slamming the lid of the wooden bread box — 
wooden oaths with a vengeance — is a dream of 

226 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

many Americans. Dignity, order, moderation 
are cardinal virtues of the Dutch. They may 
be best observed in this city. 

The happy disposition on the map of Holland 
of The Hague makes it a pivotal point for many 
excursions to such little cities as Delft, Haarlem, 
Leyden, and Utrecht. The express-trains stop 
at almost every station and move slowly; if 
they went at a rapid rate they would soon run 
into the sea or into Belgium, and the road- 
bed will not permit high speed. We recall with 
a sinking feeling a damp Sunday, September 
13, 1903, when the Amsterdam-Berlin express 
jumped the rails somewhere between Barneveld 
and Apeldoorn, and the results thereof. Luckily 
a train can't run far astray in this land of sand 
and canals, and our Pullman landed in a sand- 
bank; but several of the other coaches were not 
so fortunate and there were casualties. This 
tale has always been received with polite incre- 
dulity by Dutchmen, for accidents are rare. 
Nevertheless, an American enjoyed his first rail- 
road accident out among the dikes and ditches 
of Holland. 

Leyden, when we reached it, after an easy jaunt 
of thirty minutes, was sunny and comfortably 
warm. The pictures of this grave and venerable 
university town did not attract. We knew that 
it had to be seen, and after that there was the 
inviting trip on the Carsjens line of steamers 
out on the narrow canals past the polders, over 
the lakes, and far away; so around Leyden we 

227 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

went, hobbling and analysing the odours of its 
various canals, hoping to discover their differ- 
ences from those of Delft, of Rotterdam, and of 
The Hague; but they were plain, old-fashioned 
bilge-water smells, not necessarily unhealthy, 
though never pleasant. The atmosphere of the 
place suggests hoary wisdom. The dogs are dig- 
nified, men walk slow, and the women lower their 
voices when calling the children. The miserable 
four-wheelers, with cast-iron wheels (seemingly), 
alone break the Sabbath peace. Nevertheless, 
Leyden is far from being a cheerless spot, and 
it is picturesque. The view of the fish market 
from the canal, with the steeple of the Hoog- 
landsche, or St. Pancras Church, is very striking. 
The old city hall on the Galgewater boasts an 
early seventeenth-century stepped gable, and in 
the Lakenhall (cloth hall) there are pictures by 
Lucas van Leyden, Van Goyen, Engelbrechtzen, 
Rembrandt (a study of a head), some Jan Steens, 
and others, all in various stages of decay. The 
Steens are the freshest. This place was the birth- 
place of Rembrandt van Rhyn (they pretend to 
show you out somewhere on the Old Rhine, so 
called, the windmill of the painter's father), of 
Lucas, Jan van Goyen, Gerritt Dou, Gabriel 
Metsu, Frans van Mieris, Jan Steen — surely 
honour enough for one town. At the municipal 
museum there are several fine altar-pieces by 
another son of Leyden, Cornells Engelbrechtzen, 
and there is a chimney decoration at the town 
hall by Ferdinand Bol. The university, the 

228 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

buildings of which are scattered about, was 
founded in 1575 and harboured many lights of 
learning. 

The cloth-weaving industry did not interest 
us, and after a hurried visit to the Peter's Church 
we returned by way of an old canal to the cattle 
market (Veemarkt), more determined than ever 
to avoid the National Museum of Antiquities 
(Indian, Roman, Egyptian, Dutch, of the Caro- 
lingian period) and to adhere to our original 
programme — see Holland out-of-doors and Hol- 
land painted. Like the late Dr. Syntax, we 
were in search of .the picturesque, not of prosaic 
historical details. We even forgot to visit the 
grave of Spinoza at The Hague. 

The Carsjens excursion is the most charming 
in Holland. If it were not for fear of abusing 
that overworked word intimate, we should apply 
it definitively to this steam around the country. 
Amsterdam affords various trips, but they do 
not seem to be in the heart of little Holland. 
The Zuyder Zee is large, the North Sea is not 
far away, the canals are broader than in the 
territory where move the Carsjens. At noon 
the boat leaves — a small, comfortable craft 
with an enclosed saloon through the windows of 
which you may study the country if the wind is 
too raw on deck. Through a canal we move 
as far as the Old Rhine, sadly shrunk from its 
noble proportions in Germany. Farmhouses, 
always in the shade of trees; brick and tile yards; 
meadows with cows, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, 

229 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

windmills, whose wings look like razorblades; a 
low, serene sky-line, water everywhere; clouds 
that roll together and separate as sharp shafts 
of sunshine emerge and touch the earth. Van 
Goyen, Cuyp, Hobbema, Ruysdael painted these 
views many times. It all seems so familiar, so 
homelike, with the church spire emerging from 
a clump of trees and the kitchen windows of a 
brick house wide open as we pass. We can 
smell what is cooking. The dogs bark at our 
one sailor, and the stewards throw bread-crumbs 
to the myriad ducks that haunt these waters. 
Their outcry recalls the scream of the gulls as 
the ocean steamship enters Rotterdam — or 
Hamburg, Plymouth, Cherbourg, or New York. 
You grow hungry yourself. The air is delicately 
inviting in its coolness. ''Steward!" A brief 
consultation. Not so bad as you expected. 
Omelet, beefsteak, compote. Wine or beer. 
The price is sixty cents, American money. But 
hang the cost ! As you eat you stare across 
a flat, beautiful land and recall Sir Seymour 
Haden's remark that some French landscapes 
are immoral. If this is so, then the Dutch land- 
scape is eminently moral. The lines are formal; 
there is no suggestion of the exotic. Every 
meadow has been a battle-field where man 
fought the water by miles. Every dike is a 
lesson. Holland is not lyric, as is Venice; hers 
is a sober prose; coloured, yet never lush. The 
only lush thing is the walking in the country. 
What fat glebeland ! What black loam ! Is it 

230 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

any wonder that the salads are so green, the 
vegetables so abundant, the flowers so bloom- 
ing, the cattle so beefy, the sheep so muttony, 
the women so fat, and the men so tall ? 

The Rembrandt windmill is passed; passed, 
too, the miller's bridge; and then the steamer 
has reached the Heimanswetering. Woubrugge, 
with its tiny brick houses on either side of the 
wake, is in view. A few children regard with 
lazy eyes our noble ship. Grown-up folk give 
us no attention. As we stop nowhere there is 
nothing to be gained by looking at us. The 
Dutch are time-saving, and we are a thrice-told 
tale signifying no profit. The stream widens 
and we have the sensation of going out to sea. 
It is the Brassemeer, broad and calm, with 
plenty of pleasure and fishing boats on its placid 
bosom. Steam-yachts are no novelty. The 
channel then narrows as we enter the Old 
Wetering; we arrive at the circular canal around 
the Haarlemer meerpolder, one of the great 
polders of Holland. The old Haarlem Lake is 
larger than the Brassemeer, having an area of 
one hundred and ninety-three square kilometers. 
Farms, tilled land, roads, storehouses, and 
pumping-stations may be seen. The windmill 
is more ornamental nowadays, steam superseding 
it in the serious task of keeping the plains from 
flooding. You easily understand, after looking 
at this polder, the history of the brave people 
who were capable of cutting away the dikes when 
invaded by the enemy. 

231 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

Presently the Kaager Lake is attained; the 
village of Kaag is in the middle distance, then 
the Zeil, and soon Ley den looms before you. It 
is 4:30, and you feel as if your voyage of dis- 
covery had just begun. Only the hymn-singing 
of a pack of geese who came on board in native 
costume marred an almost perfect excursion — 
certainly more characteristic than the Marken, 
Volendam, and Zaandam trips. Best of all, 
you never leave the boat; you are not persecuted 
by guides or children crying ''Penny, lady! 
Penny, gentleman!" yet you are so near land 
that you can step ashore, and there are no an- 
noying, time- was ting locks. 

But in the end, so feeble and infirm of purpose 
is man, you tire of the eternal fiatland; tire of 
innumerable views of somewhere, by God knows 
whom; become excited at the sight of the dis- 
tant dunes, which seem like hills on the sky-line. 
At the mere thought of the Palisades a vision of 
Himalayas is evoked. The softness of the 
atmosphere is marked, the light is pervasive; 
just as set forth by any Holland master. The 
modern men have been particularly happy in 
rendering this atmosphere. Jakob Maris, Wil- 
lem Maris, Mesdag, Weissenbruch, De Bock 
give in their canvases the effect of mist, of flat 
perspectives, of churches that stand out from 
their foundation-stones to their spire with star- 
tling clearness, yet are miles distant. 

Auguste Rodin loves Holland for its slowness. 
It is in his sense a ''slow" country. The land- 

232 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

scapes are slow, to an andante tempo ; slow, but 
thorough. Outside of Rotterdam and Amster- 
dam no one is in a hurry. A land of long nights, 
big, deep beds, heavy feeding, heavy drinking, 
every movement calculated, every penny ac- 
counted for — and remember that the Dutch 
two-and-a-halfpenny piece is worth our Amer- 
ican cent; they think here in cents and florins. 
The florin contains one hundred pennies. It is 
the Dutchman's dollar. 

Ill 

HOLLAND EN FETE 
(1813-1913) 

When Henry James visited his native land a 
few years ago he was invited to a meeting of the 
pubHshers, or was it book agents? He sat 
through a long dinner punctuated by much talk, 
and when some rising young author. Bill Liver- 
pool or Mat Manchester, I've forgotten which, 
asked the father of What Masie Knew whether 
he didn't think the affair altogether an interest- 
ing one, he ironically answered : 

''Abysmally so." 

And abysmally interesting for me were the 
formal proceedings which opened the Palace of 
Peace at The Hague, in September, 1913. It 
was a great day for Mr. Andrew Carnegie and 
the hopeful persons who believe war is to be 
abolished by sentiment, but it was severe for 

233 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

those who had to sit still while official wheels 
went round slowly in the newly opened building 
out on the old road to Scheveningen (I dare you 
to pronounce this as the Dutch do). No doubt 
it was a thrilling sight for the chief actors, but I 
thought of Mr. James and his fatal phrase. De 
profundis ! I said to my neighbour more than 
once, for Dutch pomp and ceremony go on 
leaden feet. The tempo, as they say in music, 
was andante throughout this lovely land of slow 
landscapes and lazy silhouettes. 

Royalty was gracious, Mr. Carnegie smiling, 
and solemn gentlemen sonorously rumbled. The 
verbiage was interminable. But there is no gain- 
saying the magnificence of the palace. When 
its utter futility is finally demonstrated I think 
it will make one of the handsomest restaurants 
and cafes in all Europe. As such it will be use- 
ful and provocative of peace. 

The Paris Figaro achieved the feat, without 
parallel as far as I know, of printing the story 
of a special correspondent in which the name of 
Carnegie did not occur; nor was this done with 
malice prepense, for the cost of the palace is 
given, and the fact is mentioned that because of 
the huge outlay a small admission is charged. 
But of Mr. Carnegie's benefaction not a word. 
I relate this well-nigh incredible anecdote simply 
to throw into high relief the almost universal 
knowledge of the Carnegie idea in Europe. In 
every city and hamlet of Holland his portrait 
is shown. American flags decorated the streets 

234 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

of The Hague and adorned in company with the 
Dutch colours every motor-car. I saw them at 
Groningen, Friesland, and at Arnhem, in the vil- 
lage of Zeist, and at Amsterdam. There is a 
distinct wave of popular sympathy for America 
and the Americans. And this is very pleas- 
ant. 

In a certain sense all large cities bear a strong 
family resemblance; it is in the small towns 
that the curious traveller finds innumerable dif- 
ferences. Delft has its own physiognomy, so 
Utrecht. Zandvoort as a bathing resort is dis- 
tinctly different from Scheveningen, as Ostend 
is different from Blankenberghe. At Haarlem 
you see Frans Halses, or wander in the famous 
Haarlem wood. At Leyden, after you have ex- 
hausted the learned town, you go off on one of 
the Carsjens boats through the canals, patrol 
the flat Harlemmer-meer, see the polders, or at 
Amsterdam you will visit the island of Marken, 
not failing to notice the picturesque humbug- 
gery of the peasants in full costume for the benefit 
of the tourists who believe in that sort of theat- 
rical nonsense. 

But I confess that the conventional Holland 
of the painters and holiday seekers is beginning 
to pall. Canals and dikes, spotless villages Hke 
Broek, the low horizons and miles of melancholy 
dunes no longer interest me as do the people, the 
flowers, the magnificent woods, and the life of 
the little cities — the Holland not known to the 
average visitor, because he hasn't the time. 

235 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

The magic of sails mysteriously gliding through 
walls of green trees is, however, ever fresh. 

At The Hague, cosmopolitan as Paris and 
London are not, the Mauritshuis is the chief 
magnet. There the Vermeers are wonderful, 
more wonderful than the Rembrandts, though 
the multitude prefer that wooden-legged bull 
of Paul Potter. In 1909 I saw the two new ad- 
ditions, the Diana and the allegory of the New 
Testament, but the view of Delft is for me more 
fascinating than either. I have written else- 
where at length on the art of Holland. I need 
hardly add that the international exhibition of 
sporting requisites at The Hague did not long 
detain me. Far more attractive was the ship 
exhibition (E. N. T. O. S.) at Amsterdam. This 
was well worth a visit. The development of 
ships from the Middle Ages down to the newest 
achievements in battle cruisers and ocean steam 
palaces were to be seen. A comprehensive show. 
On either side of a canal was a historical re- 
construction of old Amsterdam houses. There 
was a Luna Park, modelled after Coney Island, 
with shooting the chutes and many other fa- 
miliar diversions for the delectation of grown-up 
children. At night the electric display was gay. 

Amsterdam, more than any other Dutch city, 
has ill-smelling canals, because the water is stag- 
nant; and it has more than its share of nui- 
sances. A special chapter could be written on the 
noises of Holland. Certain of them are indige- 
nous to the soil. At 6 A. M. you are awakened 

236 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

by the banging of bakers' and butchers' wagons; 
they slam the lids of these Httle carts after they 
have delivered their orders. It is like the con- 
tinual popping of rifles; then the dogs begin 
to bark. Their name is legion. All sympathy 
is due them for their arduous toil — they are 
strapped under the various vehicles both for 
draught and protection purposes. They growl 
at every passer-by, probably from a sense of 
duty, and they get the nervous visitor out of 
bed an hour earlier than is his custom. 

Worse remains, the beating of rugs and car- 
pets in the streets and open squares. Holland 
is the cleanest country in the world — though 
Berlin West is cleaner than Amsterdam — that 
no one will deny, nevertheless not the most 
hygienic country; otherwise this intolerable 
stirring up of dust would not be permitted. It 
is the custom of centuries, and when you com- 
plain a surprised look is the usual answer. I 
asked a distinguished scientific man why Am- 
sterdam, with its numerous hospitals, sanita- 
riums, and the like, could endure not only the 
noise, which is distracting, day and night (the 
long roll of artillery is the nearest approach to 
this appalling racket made by vigorous blue- 
eyed, blond-haired maids), but the clouds of 
dust which fill your nostrils and eyes if you 
venture abroad. He shrugged his shoulders. 
Carpet-cleaning establishments and vacuum 
cleaners were suggested as being less destructive 
and healthier. I saw that I was talking in vain. 

237 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

Hollanders possess nerves of iron, and ages after 
mankind has definitely conquered the air the 
good people of Holland will maltreat their rugs 
with rattan paddles, and likewise the ears of 
their visitors. 

But say these things and you say all that 
is disagreeable in this miniature land. Sober, 
serious, industrious, the people relax in a natural 
manner, enjoying themselves heartily on Sun- 
days and holidays from Dordrecht to Leeu- 
warden. Except on state occasions, such as 
historic pageants, the national costume in all 
its variety is seldom seen. More's the pity, for 
it is very becoming to the robust girls, who look, 
somehow, queer in modern attire. 

The artistic life is satisfying, and also the in- 
tellectual. With such a world-renowned genius 
as Hugo de Vries at Amsterdam, and such a 
brilliant neurologist as Dr. C. U. Ariens Kap- 
pers of the Central Institute of Brain Research 
(Amsterdam), or Dubois, who discovered in 
Java the so-called missing link (Pithecanthropus 
Erectus) at Amsterdam, to mention but three 
names with which I am familiar, Holland is far 
froim singing small at any international congress 
of scientists. Advanced ideas in sociology are 
the rule. 

Among the younger painters I found gratify- 
ing evidences of individual talent. The younger 
Israels will never make us forget his great father 
Jozef (whose masterpiece is in the Rijks Gal- 
lery), but he is an ambitious artist. There are 

238 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

many men who pattern after the Maris palettes, 
Jakob and Willem, without compassing the rich 
colour effects of either. Yet you feel that Hol- 
land will not lose her reputation as a colourist in 
their hands. My favourite etcher among the 
younger artists is Marius Bauer. Naturally, 
Vincent van Gogh is the master of the new 
school, the greatest Dutchman of them all. 
How regrettable is his premature taking-off you 
feel when you see his self-portrait at the Royal 
Museum in Amsterdam. For other modern 
artists one must go to the Municipal Museum. 

As for music, I've seldom listened to a better 
band than the Concert Gebouw, conducted by 
the fiery and versatile Mengelberg (not dead). 
The Amsterdam choir, mixed voices, is a ster- 
ling body principally devoted to Bach. Other- 
wise, despite the sporadic visits of German 
operatic organisations, and the presence all sum- 
mer at Scheveningen of either the Berlin Phil- 
harmonic or the Lamoureux Orchestra of Paris, 
Holland is more than fond of Sousa marches 
(a Dutchman by the way) and Yankee ragtime. 
Recently I heard nothing but one tune, a famous 
Tenderloin tune, whistled by the urchins, howled 
at night by the populace, and hummed by 
women. Its title I don't know, but it's simply 
entrancing ! Thus does America repay Holland 
for its imported "old masters" (manufactured 
yesterday), which are spread over America since 
the new art tariff went into effect. 

De Vrouw was the name of the exhibition 

239 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

devoted to woman's achievement through the 
ages. To say it was pitiful would be beside the 
mark — the show robs the achievement — and 
the buildings erected by mere man were equally 
flimsy. The pictures were amateurish, the 
sculpture not much better. One of America's 
women art exhibitions would be ashamed to 
put out such work as representative. You 
long for Cecilia Beaux or Mary Cassatt. In 
the book section Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Ber- 
nard Shaw were the principal *' feminine" au- 
thors in evidence. Next to the exhibition was 
the big Amsterdam ballast works. Was this 
intentional irony ? 

More satisfying was the concert given under 
Willem Mengelberg, in which such women com- 
posers as Cornelie van Oosterzee, Anna Lasu- 
brechts Vos, and Elizabeth Kuypers were heard. 
The cleverness, learning, and natural talents 
of this trio were admirable. Van Oosterzee's 
symphony will make its way. It is the most 
''important" musical composition from the pen 
of a woman that I have thus far heard, and I 
don't believe the composer has ever set a torch 
to a hen-house, slapped a cabinet minister, or 
blown up a church. 

The Dutch tongue is comparatively easy to 
one acquainted with German and English, but 
it is far from melodious. When spoken by the 
veteran actor Louis Bouwmeester, in parts like 
Shylock or Julius Caesar, it has a certain har- 
mony. Herman Heijermans, whose Good Hope 

240 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

is known to English playgoers, is now the man- 
ager of two Amsterdam theatres. I enjoyed 
under his direction Allerzielen (All Souls) and 
Ghetto. I also heard a Dutch version of Clyde 
Fitch's The Woman in the Case (De Vrouw in 
't Spel). Shaw's Doctor's Dilemma was an- 
nounced for production. Leonard van Noppen, 
Professor of the chair of Dutch Literature, Co- 
lumbia University, has done much to make the 
EngHsh-reading world familiar with the great 
epic of Von Vondel, Luzifer (with which Milton 
was evidently familiar when he wrote Paradise 
Lost), and the prose of Douwes Dekker (better 
known as Multatuli). 

The younger Dutchmen are unavowedly in- 
fluenced by the newer French writers; also by 
Wilde and Shaw. For the latter they cherish an 
affection, but when a body of Leyden students 
wrote him inviting him to visit their venerable 
university and lecture he tartly answered that 
never would he go to a country that plundered 
him of his plays, or words to that effect. Since 
then the eminent altruist gets his regular 
royalties, as there is now a copyright law in 
operation. 

A word could be added about this polyglot 
speech of the Hollanders, whose English is 
excellent. After the Russians they are possibly, 
because of the difficulty of their own language, 
the most accomplished linguists in Europe. 
Everywhere you will find men and women who 
answer your questions in idiomatic Enghsh. 

241 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

The Dutch cuisine is richer and more full- 
flavoured than the German. Never go to Hol- 
land to "reduce." The wines imported from 
France, a few hours away, are cheap and sound. 

The race itself runs to tall men and women. 
The girls are "daughters of the gods, divinely 
fair," strapping Alices in Wonderland, though 
the promise of good looks in youth is seldom ful- 
filled in maturity. Corpulence is not a common 
characteristic. Active, seldom phlegmatic, the 
men are more vivacious than the Teuton. And 
while much "schnapps" is drunk by a certain 
class of workmen, wine, not beer, is the national 
beverage. Living, especially house rentals, is 
much cheaper than in America. Everywhere 
the residences are of brick or stone. The bath- 
room is yet to become universal, but for comfort 
and economy the little cities of Holland are 
without equal. The moral climate of The 
Hague and Amsterdam is less torrid and friv- 
olous than that of Paris or Berlin. 

From Amsterdam to Haarlem is only a half- 
hour by railway; to Zandvoort on the North 
Sea fifteen minutes more. There is more fun, 
natural and undisguised, at Zandvoort than at 
the mundane Scheveningen. The "plain peo- 
ple" go out on the beach and dance to the ac- 
companiment of a genuine Hoboken brass band 
(yellow-dog clarinets and all), and drink under 
a tent on the dunes. Approaching this resort, 
you fancy yourself in a sort of Holland Switzer- 
land; the sand-hills are sometimes one hundred 

242 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

and fifty feet high. The bathing is beyond 
criticism, the beach shelving, with firm sand and 
quite safe. 

In Haarlem Louis Robert continues to give 
his biweekly organ recitals in the Cathedral of 
Sint Bavorek, playing upon the mellow- toned 
instrument with skill and sympathy. I heard 
one programme of Bach, Mendelssohn, and 
Guilmant. Nothing will convince me that mov- 
ing the Frans Hals portraits from the old Town 
Hall has improved them. I visited a half dozen 
times the new museum, and an appropriately 
built house it is, yet the lighting is not as direct 
as at the former quarters. Consequently the 
Regent groups do not come out so brilliantly. 
The new Frans Hals statue is placed in a pretty 
park. 

After Haarlem, Utrecht. There all was peace 
(barring the inevitable rug-hammering), and if 
there were few pictures, and no music-making 
(excepting the eternal whistling, a trait of Hol- 
landers, young and old), there was a little city of 
exceeding charm quite its own. The antiquarian 
will find in the twelfth-century cathedral and 
the numerous additions a perfect compendium of 
Gothic art, and for the student of science there 
are several seats of learning. For the flaneur, 
the writer, the scholar, the world forgetting by 
the world forgot, there is a tranquil existence 
beyond compare, and if he has the lust of the 
eye for the things pictorial then he can gratify 
it at his very elbow. The old canal, with its 

243 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

houses underneath; the new canal and its rows 
of dignified dwellings; the walk under broad 
avenues of foliage; the Malieban; Wilhelmina 
Park and its umbrageous attractions, not to 
speak of the suburbs; green is everywhere, 
flowers everywhere, and at every turn a vista 
that makes you envious of such municipal gov- 
ernment that has transformed a town into a park. 
There is only one modern hotel, the Pays-Bas. 

Utrecht is not, for some reason, included in 
the ordinary itinerary of the tourist, though only 
thirty-five minutes from Amsterdam. If you 
wish to go farther afield, there are Zeist and 
Baarn, both leafy paradises and only thirty min- 
utes away by train or tram. At Baarn are a 
number of villas, owned by wealthy people, 
which seem ideal. No m.osquitoes or grachten 
(canals) smells annoy you at Utrecht. Your 
nerves soon quiet down. You sleep the sleep 
of the unjust (the soundest of all) and wonder 
as you doze off why people visiting Holland rave 
over windmills and canals instead of the magnif- 
icent woods and flower-beds. Ah, the proces- 
sional forests of Holland ! 

I attended a cricket-match (almost as sopo- 
rific a game as golf — true sport for somnambu- 
lists), and I saw young, handsome, well-set-up 
chaps pulling in single shells with sliding seats 
up the Katharina Singel (a broad canal). Foot- 
ball, too — they call it voetbal — is a pastime 
much admired. Bicycles are omnipresent, the 
roads for motoring almost faultless. 

244 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

The festal event of the season at Utrecht was 
the exhibition of North Netherland art previous 
to 1575. It was a profoundly significant gath- 
ering. Such masters as Lucas van Leyden (in 
black and white as wd\ as in colour), Jan van 
Scorel, Engelbrechtzen, Jacob Cornehsz, and a 
flock of unknown painters, beginning with the 
master of the Death of Mary, were represented. 
Archaic in technique, these ancient panels and 
canvases contained a wealth of sentiment, relig- 
ious feeling, and sincerity in the delineation of 
nature. You see, not without wonder, how the 
new men of yesterday and to-day, the Neo- 
Impressionists and Cubists, have boldly pilfered 
the technical procedure of these old fellows and 
have vainly endeavoured to trap the emotion 
and recover their ''innocence of the eye." So 
many Scorels I never saw assembled. I have 
long since registered my admiration for this 
painter's Mary Magdalen, which formerly hung 
in the Town Hall, Haarlem, but is now in the 
Rijks Museum. 

A note made reminds me that Jan van Scorel 
was born at Schoorel, near Alkmaar, in the year 
1493. He studied under Jacob Cornelisz at 
Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at 
Utrecht. He died in that place, 1562. He vis- 
ited Albrecht Diirer at Nuremberg and resided 
for a time in Italy. His portraits are undoubt- 
edly Italianate in expression, and the portrait 
of Bishop George van Egmont in the Utrecht 
Gallery is no exception. It is a panel picture 

245 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

and cracked, but otherwise in fair condition. 
The Lucas van Leydens were the glory of the 
exhibition. 

I forgot to say that the clangorous chimes of 
the cathedral in Utrecht are so out of tune that 
they remind me of castor-oil in buttermilk. 

No great composer has yet emerged from Hol- 
land, but her instrumentalists are celebrated. 
As befits the grave diapason of national feeling, 
the violoncello is sedulously studied. We need 
only recall the elemental power of Fritz Giese 
and the astounding virtuosity of Anton Hek- 
king (is it necessary to mention the sonorous 
Josef Hollman?); Dutch 'cellists in the modern 
orchestra are as indispensable as Belgian wood- 
wind players. 

A word might not be amiss about the high 
average of culture; the Dutch are omnivorous 
readers in a half dozen languages, and, thanks 
to their proximity to Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and 
London, not to mention their newspapers, are 
a well-informed people in matters contemporary. 

It was a warm September Saturday morning 
when in company with Dr. Kappers I met that 
truly great scientist and most modest man, Hugo 
de Vries, and in his own ^'experimental gar- 
den" at the Amsterdam Botanic Garden (Hortus 
Siccus, is the legend over the gates). Professor 
de Vries — he is professor at the University of 
Amsterdam — looked very well after his long 
visit to America, where in New York he was 
invited by President Butler to join the teaching 

246 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

faculty of Columbia College. He wisely de- 
clined the honour, notwithstanding the horti- 
cultural temptations of Bronx Park. But, 
being a canny Dutchman, he hammered this 
offer into the heads of the Dutch authorities 
and was given a new and more commodious 
building in which to work out his now-famous 
doctrine of the mutation of plant and flower 
life. He admires Luther Burbank and thus 
sums up the difference in their respective ex- 
periments: "Burbank crosses species, I seek to 
create new ones." He does create new species, 
does this benevolent-looking Klingsor with the 
flowers in his magic garden. But it is white, 
not black, magic. He lets nature follow her 
capricious way, giving her from time to time a 
gentle hint; a sort of floral eugenics. I saw 
eight-leaved clovers and was told that many 
more leaves may bud, as the clover was origi- 
nally a stalk full of leaves. For the supersti- 
tiously inclined there are three, four, five, six, 
and seven leaved varieties. The evening prim- 
rose (i^onthera lamarckiana) is at present the 
object of Professor de Vries's experiments. Cer- 
tainly this yellow flower means more to him 
than it did to Wordsworth's Peter. He ties up 
its petals in tiny bags and, protected from ma- 
rauding birds and bees, and no doubt being 
bored by its solitude (though pistil and stamen 
remain), it begins to put forth a new species. 
With my own eyes I witnessed the miracle of a 
half dozen flowers in the world that were not 

247 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

in existence a year ago. That is creating life, 
indeed, and even Sir Oliver Lodge must give his 
assent to the statement. The new flower is a 
'' constant," it goes on reproducing itself, but 
at times the back of a leaf shows a struggle to 
revert to its old pupillaceous state. Darwin 
taught that evolution is orderly, progressive, 
slow, without jumps — nature never leaps; 
there are no sudden miracles. De Vries proves 
the reverse — • the miracle had taken place over- 
night in his experiments; nature strikes out 
swiftly, blindly, apparently without selection. 
The age of miracles is not past. I saw what he 
called a rosette, a green plant-Hke production, 
and was told that it was a new birth of the com- 
monplace primrose — in Alabama he gathered 
his parent flowers. Really you think of the ^' Dr. 
Moreau" of H. G. Wells (his most arresting 
book), and wonder if such things could be pos- 
sible in the human order. De Vries is the most 
significant figure in the history of science since 
Darwin. 

He has just published a big volume concern- 
ing his travels and experiments while in Amer- 
ica. His great work on Mutation was trans- 
lated long ago, but it is principally for stu- 
dents. I can recommend, however, a pamphlet 
of thirty-seven pages, entitled Afstammings en 
Mutatis — Leer (published in the Levensvragen 
series at Baarn, near Utrecht, Holland), as con- 
taining in crystallised form the doctrine of mu- 
tation, set forth by its author with a wealth of 

248 



LITTLE HOLLAND 

argument and in his usual clarity of style. Pro- 
fessor de Vries speaks and writes English fluently 
and idiomatically, but he is too immersed in his 
work to translate his prose into our language. 

I was loath to leave the presence of this man 
who, in the Indian summer of his life, looks like 
a bard and philosopher, summoning strange 
and beautiful flowers from the vasty deep of 
nature. He is an exalted member of the most 
honourable profession in the world, a gentle 
gardener of genius. 



249 



IV 

BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

I 

BRUSSELS 

The man who first called Brussels le petit 
Paris must have been imbibing many bottles 
of the fiery Burgundy for which the city is re- 
nowned. Brussels is only a mock-turtle Paris. 
The cookery is more savoury, less sophisticated 
and oiKer than in Paris. Naturally we allude 
to the Flemish cuisine, not to the imitation 
Parisian restaurants that flourish in all the lead- 
ing hotels. Stews, hotchpotches, meats smoth- 
ered in onions, soups so thick that a spoon will 
stand upright in them, sauerkraut, hot sal- 
ads, sea food cooked with plenty of butter are 
Brussels specialties. Birds abound in season 
and out, and as to the quality of the wine there 
is no doubt. Clarets and Burgundies of au- 
thentic vintage are to be had at moderate 
prices in certain tavernes and restaurants, but 
not at the hotels or in resorts frequented by 
tourists. The difference between Holland and 
Belgium, if one were cynical, would be to note 

250 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

that in the latter country they never serve fish 
after the meat. That is a Dutch custom which is 
still a mystery to us. But the Belgian kitchen is 
richer than the Hollandish, and the wines bet- 
ter and cheaper. On the other hand, the cafes 
are not as comfortable. Those long reading- 
tables with student-lamps, which so humanise 
a cafe, are all through Holland; in Brussels the 
cafe is rather cheerless. The majority of hotels 
are old palaces and mansions altered into very 
uncomfortable rooms, where a bathroom is bur- 
ied in a wall as if bathing were some forbidden 
luxury. What these houses are like in the 
bleak, rainy winter one may imagine. The hor- 
rors of hotel life must be experienced here to the 
full. And that ''M. the director," who seems 
to eat, drink, and sleep in his frock coat and 
beard — has his bland smile a parallel on the 
Continent? 

The fact is Brussels caters largely to English 
people. It always has been a favourite city. 
And as the English are stubborn in their ad- 
herence to antiquated customs, Brussels hotel 
keepers consider themselves very a la mode be- 
cause the majority of their guests are from Great 
Britain. Americans come here in throngs, but 
they are birds of passage, their season is brief, 
while the English matron with her daughters 
winters at the pensions and hotels, for the price 
of living is cheap. The English are better 
liked, better understood; they don't grumble 
as do the Americans over the cruel dampness 

251 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

and the unsanitary conditions of the hotels and 
pensions. They know. They come from Eng- 
land and they have eaten its soggy cookery. 

But Brussels is gay. Narrow and provincial 
and noisy as it is, it enjoys itself, whether in the 
lower town crowded with cafes or in the upper 
with its broad avenues, tree-lined, vast squares, 
palaces, and museums. The cafes are the social 
barometers of the place. At seven o'clock it is 
difficult to get a seat for your consommation, 
and in the restaurants there is a waiting list. 
Again we may remark that the food is capital. 
A glutton of renown once drew up an itinerary 
for a week — a grub route which, while it makes 
the mouth water, would be apt to produce a 
formidable indigestion. For some reason, pre- 
sumably climatic, one is hungrier than in New 
York. Two hours after a heavy dinner you will 
see people swallowing sandwiches. Perhaps the 
wine and beer aid the metabolic processes. 
Chicken, so much cheaper in Holland, is very 
good in Belgium. Fresh mushrooms are in 
vogue, but Brussels sprouts we did not see ex- 
cept the comical little ones on the chins of pale 
young men — all smoking the deadly Belgian 
tobacco. 

The Brussels woman runs to waist. Good 
cheer and the admiration of the men for ladies 
of generous proportions have much to do with 
their size and weight. They dress a shade more 
exaggerated than in Paris. If Paris wears big 
hats, Brussels sports cart-wheels. At the pres- 

252 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

ent time the edict as to the suppression of the 
monster head-gear has evidently not reached the 
ears of Brussels dames and daughters. They 
are all hat and feathers and shoulders. The 
Rubens woman rules. The very men you rub 
shoulders with might have stepped from a 
Jacob Jordaens canvas. Women's rights here? 
Why, every woman has the right of way in the 
street, in the cafes, and in conversation. A 
pleasing sight it is to see the portly mother, the 
undersized husband (meek but thirsty), the 
flock of children, the family friend enter a res- 
taurant of a Sunday night. The function begins 
with due solemnity. The waiter is summoned 
and submits to a cross-fire of questions. Sunday 
only comes once a week and there must be no 
hitches on the programme. Soup, fish, meat, 
vegetables, salad, dessert, and wines are con- 
sidered as if a national crisis were impending. 
Then the overture sounds, the curtain rises, and 
the play begins. It is a jolly comedy. Good 
humour, laughter, hearty appetites rule. A 
dyspeptic American is filled with dismay or 
consumed with envy. They go to their homes, 
these worthy people, and sleep the sleep of the 
overfed. 

The children are without exaggeration very 
pretty, curly, blond, stout, with cheeks blazing 
with colour. They play in the streets, roll in 
front of honking automobiles, dodge tram-cars, 
splash in the fountains, and make more noise 
than the rug beaters of Rotterdam. (Rugs are 

253 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

not abused in Belgium, nor are there many 
bicycles, the motor-car is sovereign.) Brussels 
is not clean; that is, not as clean as Holland, nor 
are the inhabitants as spruce as the Dutch. 
They are in a civic sense conceited. Too many 
tourists have spoiled the broth of their polite- 
ness. They are anxious to do you a service for 
a slight remuneration. Beggars are more plen- 
tiful than in Holland; unquestionably there is 
more poverty. The shops are small, but cheap 
is shopping, so womankind says. Gloves, per- 
fume, millinery are sought after by strangers. 

When a big fire automobile whizzed by con- 
taining something that looked like a douche, 
an honest gentleman asked us with ill-stifled 
pride if New York could show any such miracle. 
For answer we went to the fire, a pifHing cigarette 
affair, and witnessed the Flemish temperament 
working at top speed. The spectacle was im- 
pressive. Not apparently as excitable as the 
Gallic race, the Brussels men and women chanted 
at fullest lung power a sort of mixed choral, with 
crazy Flemish counterpart for one thousand 
voices da capo. The vocal sounds were the out- 
pouring of admiration from overheated hearts 
for the pompiers. When the Spritze — we can 
think of no better title — sent forth a garden- 
hose stream, joy was unconfined. There was 
more enthusiasm than on a wet Sunday in 
Versailles when the fountains begin to spurt and 
the band to play. Unappeased, our Belgian 
acquaintance asked for further information. 

254 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

The New York Fire Department was evidently 
a myth manufactured at the moment, the popu- 
lation figures pure lying. Good old soul, within 
his bosom beat true patriotism. They stand 
in the streets here in deep water watching the 
cinematograph advertisements as did their 
fathers the Punch-and-Judy shows. 

The bells are not so insistent as those of Ant- 
werp and Bruges. But they may be heard. 
One church rings the hours on the half and re- 
peats the number when the regular hour is 
reached. Why? Aren't we galloping to eter- 
nity fast enough? Why should eight- thirty 
sound nine, and nine be sounded over again at 
the real hour? Sunday is the best day to see 
the people in gala. There is dancing in the open 
in some quarters of the town during the Ker- 
messe — as is the case at Antwerp. In the 
Grande Place opposite the magnificent Hotel 
de Ville — one of the greatest squares in Europe 
— on Sunday mornings there is a bird-and- 
flower market until midday. From narrow 
side streets comes the atrocious singing of the 
cafe chantants. Hobnailed shoes clatter over 
the stones, parrots scream, women chaffer, and 
across the way is the noble fagade of the old 
building. At the Theatre de la Monnaie we 
heard a mediocre performance of Massenet's 
Manon, Second-rate singers and an excellent 
orchestra. 

The parks are pleasant and the view from the 
upper town inspiring, while the first glimpse of 

255 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

the Palace of Justice evokes erratic architec- 
ture. It is one of the largest and most imposing 
buildings in the world. The Cathedral, Sts. 
Michel and Gudule, is a fine thirteenth-century 
Gothic structure. It is not a bad plan to stop 
at MaKnes on the way down from Antwerp. 
The old schedule of fifty minutes has been re- 
duced to thirty-six minutes by the trein-block. 
Malines or Mechlin is not far from Brussels, and 
the paintings of Rubens in the churches of St. 
Jean and Notre Dame make the trip a notable 
one, setting aside the picturesqueness of the 
town and its famous lace-making industry. 

Flowers are plentiful and there is no danger 
of conversation perishing. As a fine art here 
we cannot pretend to judge. We believe that 
the American woman's speaking voice has been 
too much criticised, not only by Henry James 
but also by genuine Americans. The Flemish 
and Walloon voice is loud, is often raised to 
screaming with the women, and noisy in the 
case of men. As for the dogs, poor overworked 
animals (the Belgians are not so kind to ani- 
mals as the Dutch), dogs here haul heavy 
burdens; we often wished their recurrent nerve 
could be severed, so as to still their continual 
barking. 

The general aspect of the street is animated. 
Life does not run at slow tempo in Brussels. It 
is gay and it is not a little Paris. But the large 
army of domino-playing shopkeepers and bour- 
geois give it a philistine aspect on holidays. 

256 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

As one American remarked on a hot Sunday: 
''Come now, doesn't all Europe remind one of 
East Grand Street on a Saturday night?" 

II 

LITTLE CITIES AND THE BEACHES 

The staid old Flemish town of Malines, bet- 
ter known to Americans as MechHn, where they 
make the lace, has been pluming itself on an 
exposition which opened in August and lasted 
months. The affair bears the following title: 
Exposition des anciens metiers d'art Ma- 
linois, d'art reUgieux de la province d'Anvers 
et de folklore local. It is exactly what it pre- 
tends to be, an exhibition devoted to old pic- 
tures, sculpture, tapestry, embroidery, jewellery, 
pewter ware, iron ware, bronze, brass, clocks, 
bells, gilded leather, lace, ecclesiastical vest- 
ments, sacred vessels, manuscripts, apothecary's 
mortars and what-not. A more fascinating col- 
lection we never viewed, not even at the Bruges 
exposition of 1900. This exposition at MaHnes 
is under royal patronage; also churchly, his 
Eminence Cardinal Archbishop Mercier repre- 
senting the latter. There are about forty-five 
old paintings, some on panels, though none of 
magisterial importance. Brabant once occupied 
an important position in the history of the fine 
arts, beginning with Jean de Woluwe in the 
fourteenth century. There are Bruges, Ghent, 

257/ 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

and Tournai with the Van Eycks and Robert 
Campin, called the Master of Flemalle; Brus- 
sels with Bernard van Orley and Roger van der 
Weyden (De la Pasture) ; Lou vain with Thierry 
Bouts; Antwerp with Quentin Matsys — not to 
mention Rubens or Van Dyck — and Malines 
with Master Vrancke van Lint and the Van 
Battele. 

There is a panel in the Malines show attrib- 
uted to Robert Campin and a Descent from the 
Cross given to Van der Weyden. Also a strik- 
ing triptych, The Legend of St. Anne, of the 
Antwerp school, sixteenth century. Michel 
Coxcie is here, also a J. Patinir, the latter with 
his characteristic blues. A Bernard van Orley 
(?) represents Man Under the Reigns of Law and 
Grace. There are several Francks. Velvet 
Breughel is present, and a Virgin with the In- 
fant, by Giovanni Bellini. This Itahan panel 
is, to say the least, rather questionable. The 
sculpture is for the most part in wood and is 
marvellous. There are rooms arranged as at 
the MetropoKtan Museum so as to show the 
precise manner of living at the period. There 
is no mistaking the Flemish kitchen or the din- 
ing-room, with their massive tables capable of 
holding barons of beef and the huge tankards 
of the mighty drinkers. The finest tapestry 
on a large scale is sixteenth-century Brussels 
make, depicting episodes in the life of St. Eliza- 
beth of Hungary. 

Just off the lace room we saw an old woman 

258 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

sitting near a window making lace. She must 
have been one hundred years old, though her 
eyes were youthful and her hands, instead of 
skinny claws, were plump and looked like those 
of a piano virtuoso. She was very industrious 
with her bobbins, her fingers working with 
nervous agility; in a doorway a painter had 
planted his easel and was painting her. You 
fancied yourself in the Middle Ages, with die 
Meistersinger around the corner serenading mine 
host of De Goude Kroone. But if you walked 
away and then happened to enter the low-ceil- 
inged room from another side you would find, 
as we did, the gay old lady with her venerable 
hands in her lap and conversing with the painter, 
who was quite idle. A bit of a disappointment, 
yet not without its compensation from the pic- 
turesque view-point. The carefully prepared 
mise en scene is one of the features of the show. 
Malines has become hopelessly commercial, 
therefore thriving. But apart from the fine 
Van Dyck, the altar-piece at St. Rombold's, it 
is no longer as interesting as it was. Bruges 
beats it to a standstill when it comes to a ques- 
tion of atmosphere. There are canals enough, 
forsooth, though they are prosaic and muddy. 
When we reached the train that took us back 
to Antwerp, a matter of twenty minutes, the 
official thermometer registered ninety-two de- 
grees. No wonder the waiter of a near-by cafe 
slept calmly in the boskage. No wonder the 
beer was hot and placid. No wonder we were 

259 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

glad to escape. The fields in Belgium are 
burned up by the too-fervent sun of last sum- 
mer. The trees are grey and dusty looking; 
no silver gleams from the network of canals. 
As for Antwerp, it was with genuine dismay that 
the pilgrims from America found a weltering 
heat and, horrible to relate, mosquitoes of the 
true-blue New Jersey breed. They sang and 
stung with an avid earnestness that betrayed 
their origin. No doubt they came over on the 
steamships from New York. All Europe is 
suffering from them and another superstition 
is vanished, that there are no mosquitoes in 
Europe. The Europeans now know the lux- 
uries of an American August. At Antwerp they 
say the pests came from Asia; but they prob- 
ably breed out in the mud-fiats of the Scheldt 
and thence overspread the country like a new 
plague from Egypt. 

There is no denying the fact that Antwerp is 
a noisy city, with its cathedral chimes at first 
an attraction and after twenty-four hours a 
nuisance. Bells that ring every seven minutes 
soon become intolerable to modern ears. Be- 
sides, these chimes play secular music, arranged 
for them by two well-known Belgian composers, 
Jan Blockx and Peter Benoit, not exactly good 
material. We recall one maddening sequence, 
a run in double chromatic sixths, not one bell 
in tune with another, a nightmare when heard 
in the small hours. Bruges suffers from the 
same dire noises. In the old times bells not 

260 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

only summoned the faithful to worship but 
warded off tempests, exorcised demons and 
succubi, and announced to the fugitive that 
sanctuary was nigh. But in this century their 
tintinnabulation gets on the nerves. The na- 
tives have no nerves; neither have the hardy 
Britons, who prowl the curved streets of Bruges 
or peep and botanise in the churchyards. It 
is the semineurasthenic American who is the 
sufferer, and after being aurally bombarded by 
the monsters of the Bruges belfry he cannot help 
remembering that the Chinese torture poHtical 
prisoners by placing them bound under a big 
bell and literally tolling them to death. If 
Edgar Poe had lived in Bruges he would have 
added this line to his jingling Bells: O the 
hinging and the banging of the hellsbells of 
Bruges. 

We heard the celebrated Tony Nauwelaerts, 
champion bell player of Belgium, play the 
chimes at Bruges. As music it was horrible for 
sensitive ears, but as an exhibition of athletic 
skill it was excellent. Mendelssohn's Spring Song 
taken at a funereal tempo was one piece and 
later came the inevitable Chimes of Normandy. 
It was odd to hear a tune from Traviata and a 
few bars of what seemed intended for Put Down 
One and Carry Two from Victor Herbert's 
operetta Babes in Toyland at Bruges. You 
can endure the solemn tolling of the hours be- 
tween now and eternity, but latter-day tunes 
are a synchronism. 

261 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

We saw a little Kermesse one hot Sunday 
afternoon at Hoboken, a suburb of Antwerp. 
The joyous creaking carousel, the hokey-pokey 
ice-cream man, a small army of children yelling 
and dancing evoked a picture of Coney Island, 
a few thousand miles away. Some men in 
velveteens overcome by slumber and gin lay in 
the middle of the road; the dogs sniffed them 
and went their way; the tram engineers merely 
smiled. Yet drunkenness is by no means as 
prevalent in Belgium as it was ten years ago. 
A determined effort on the part of the church 
has, comparatively speaking, driven out the 
schnapps or gin drinkers. Sunday is a day of 
piety, followed by harmless recreation. People 
flock to the churchyards, for the cult of the 
dead is s'edulously practised, or to the New 
Park in Antwerp, a vast tract of uncultivated 
meadows and trees. The summer proved dis- 
astrous to the foliage, and the walks are thick 
with dust. The most attractive spot in all Ant- 
werp for an afternoon's outing is unquestionably 
the zoological gardens, behind the Central Sta- 
tion. The actual territory is small in com- 
parison with the Bronx zoo, but it is agreeably 
laid out, and much is made of scanty resources. 
A new aquarium adds to the interest, although 
it cannot be compared with the one on the 
Marina at Naples. The band plays; people 
walk or sit sipping coffee; the air is cooler as 
dusk approaches, and you feel at peace with the 
world despite the mosquitoes. 

262 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

The working man, the street labourer, for ex- 
ample, earns about a dollar a day. We watched 
a group from our window on the Place Verte 
lay down some rails for the tram-cars, and the 
amount of time consumed in proportion to the 
work performed was masterly. Here in prac- 
tice was to be seen the prime concept of socialism, 
half a day's work for a whole day's wages. You 
won't find this set down so baldly in Marx or 
in the pamphlets of his followers, but that is 
what sociaKsm, with its protean forms, amounts 
to; a sort of temporal sabotage, in which one 
man aids the other in wasting the minutes of 
his employers. They idly swept the tracks or 
laid down at an interval of ten minutes a Bel- 
gian block. It was positively exhilarating to see 
these blond giants stare at the neat, fresh-col- 
oured servant-girls and pretend to labour. Oc- 
casionally one stole away and returned wiping 
his Ups. Beer, sweet brown beer, is very cheap 
in Belgium. The country is honeycombed with 
sociaKsm, and its results are far from assuring. 
Perhaps there is also a woman question; but 
we doubt it, as the women are the whole shoot- 
ing-match here — the women and the dogs. 
Little wonder the men have gracefully resigned 
all cares of business into the hands of the 
women, who are marvels at petty swindHng the 
green tourist on shopping bent, and also a great 
aid to the dogs in pushing or pulling wagons. 
The poor dogs suffer for want of water, other- 
wise are lusty and always barking. 

263 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

We were held up on the railroad between 
Ghent and Bruges the other evening for three 
and a half hours. Usually the trip takes only 
forty minutes by the express. We had visited 
the Cathedral of St. Bavon in Ghent, had seen 
where as a boy Maurice Maeterlinck played 
pussy-cat with the late Georges Rodenbach; 
had seen the magnificent Adoration of the Pas- 
cal Lamb by the Van Eycks, and only regretted 
that old Mottez had died and that his once-cel- 
ebrated restaurant on the Place d'Armes had 
disappeared; nevertheless we felt that the day 
had not been wasted, when the annoyance of 
spending several hours on the rails outside of 
Bruges came as a reminder that accidents will 
happen in the best regulated of systems. A 
passenger express from Ostend had overturned 
three freight cars of the usual match-wood va- 
riety common to these parts in the Bruges station. 
The excitement was terrific. An accident had 
never before occurred in this town; that is, in 
the memory of the oldest inhabitant. The sta- 
tion force was demoralised. Not a thing was 
done for half an hour. An eye-witness relates 
that for at least that length of time the head 
man and his assistants ran about like decap- 
itated chickens, waving ineffectual wings, or 
arms, and exclaiming mightily. Then it oc- 
curred to some bright person that trains were 
being held up, fast trains from and to Brussels 
and Antwerp and Paris, from Ostend. If a few 
soldiers had been sent for from the city garrison 

264 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

the rails would have been clear in an hour. 
About nine o'clock, five hours after the mishap, 
the ways were free. About two hundred and 
fifty trains a day pass through the cramped sta- 
tion. Luckily they are building a larger one 
outside the town. We wished to get out of our 
train and walk in from Oostcamp, but the con- 
ductor said no; such a procedure, simple as it 
seemed, would have upset the entire system 
from Brussds to Bruges. Did we not have to 
surrender our tickets to an official at the latter 
place? There is red tape for you. At last 
twenty-five trains were halted within sight of the 
lights of Bruges, and not a human escaped. 

The old town is as charming as ever, with its 
walks under the immemorial trees of the ram- 
parts fringed by sombre canals, the scum on 
whose surface is a pistachio green. There is 
more noise than formerly and the city sadly 
suffers for the want of a first-rate hotel. There 
are several glorified boarding-houses with more 
or less indifferent imitations of a French cuisine; 
whereas the real Flemish cooking is preferable 
with its rich soups and sauces, its hochepot 
gantois — a sort of celestial hotchpot — and 
the still richer Burgundies. But you get none 
of these things at the hotels. The average vis- 
itors prefer tepid flavours and are correspond- 
ingly catered to; in the local restaurants you 
secure what you want, though the note of ele- 
♦^ance is missing. The death of the venerable 
Van den Berghe, once a cook of unrivalled skill, 

265 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

is a great loss. The only two hotels that count 
are active rivals. Does the one set up an auto- 
mobile, the other announces a lift, although 
there are but two low stories to the building; 
then the first puts a big flower vase electrically 
illuminated in its courtyard; you assist nightly 
at the incantation scene from Faust, without 
music; that operatic coup starts the second 
hotel into the extravagance of a private coach 
with a monogram, not to speak of a haughty 
coachman got up in the EngHsh mode. And 
so it goes. If only there were less bell-ringing 
and more native cookery Bruges would be still 
more desirable than it is — and we find it the 
most desirable spot in Europe for a summer or 
fall vacation. And with the exceptions of 
Prague, Toledo, Venice, it has no rival in pic- 
turesqueness. Every turn of an alley or water- 
way is a pure ravishment for the eye. We pur- 
posely refrain from again dilating upon the art 
of Memling, Van Eyck, and Gherard David, 
who may be studied here in all their efflores- 
cence. If since Johann Sebastian Bach nothing 
new has been created in music, then no original 
painting has appeared since the magnificent 
work of Jan Van Eyck. His is indeed a lost art. 
Another attraction in Bruges is its position as 
a summer city. In twenty minutes by express 
you may reach Ostend, Blankenberghe, Heyst 
(Heist), or Knocke, where the beaches, the vast 
stone piers, the huge hotels, and the high prices 
— that is at Ostend — fill the visitor with awo 

266 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

and admiration. Blankenberghe is rather too 
noisy, Knocke is cheap, Heyst is pretty and not 
too dear. At Ostend we paid sixty cents for 
two cups of poor coffee. At Duinberg, near 
Heyst, they play tennis behind dunes as big as 
cathedrals, play with a stretched tape instead 
of a net. They think it is very EngHsh. The 
sea is as wet and tumbUng as at our beaches, 
and people enjoy themselves even as we do. 
There is much of a muchness even at these 
pretty Belgian bathing resorts. If you don't 
wish to go to Heyst or Knocke by the regular 
trains, steam tram-cars that start from the Bruges 
station and snort ferociously will carry you 
through a lovely region of meadows intersected 
by canals; by alleys of processional poplars you 
dream of Hobbema and his Mittelharnais alley 
or of Ruysdael as you pass a sudden silvery 
waterfall. Even the sunlight seems of silver as 
it glances through the white clouds, and the 
sight of a windmill revolving at a lenten pace 
reminds one that over here the rhythm of life 
if not exciting is at least conducive to content, 
which is the true equivalent of happiness. 

You can't blame the Brugeois, who is a 
veritable burgher, for not becoming excited over 
Georges Rodenbach's Bruges la morte. The 
dead poet delicately scarified the gossiping in- 
habitants, mocked at their superstitions and 
called attention to their inquisitiveness, as 
evidenced by their telltale mirrors attached to 
so many windows. But they were right accord- 

267 



BELGIAN ETCHINGS 

ing to their lights. Bruges is a rattling, wide- 
awake, sparkling Httle city, not a dead one. 
If you want the poetic, albeit morbid, Bruges 
come over here in November when the mist 
hangs white scarfs of nebulosity on the Min- 
newater, where the black swans move like 
phantoms over the phlegmatic surface. Then 
Bruges la morte is to be seen, and after you have 
caught a nice cold you go to your inn through 
the dense fog to the accompaniment of the me- 
tallic clangour of the bells, bells, bells, and the 
next day you escape to Brussels. We prefer 
Bruges, the cheerful. 



268 



V 

MADRID 

Spain is not always sunny. Spain is not 
lyrically charming, as is Italy. Italy is a beau- 
tiful, coquettish woman; Spain is epical and 
sternly mascuHne. The barbers in Seville are 
not Figaros, and nowadays they dip their razors 
in antiseptic fluid. There are no bandits; the 
only bandits are the beggars. Spain is rapidly 
becoming modernised. Hotels of excellent qual- 
ity may be found, railroad trains are seldom 
more than two hours behindhand, and the peo- 
ple do not dress like toreadors or gipsies; that 
is, on the streets. No romance left? Plenty 
of it; but not of the operatic sort. The Spain 
of the Cid, of Theophile Gautier and of Prosper 
Merimee has vanished; it is now the Spain of 
Emiha Pardo Bazan, Blasco Ibaiiez, of Zuloaga; 
and, let it be added, it is as fascinating a Spain 
as in the days of Cervantes. 

Nevertheless Spain is only partially civilised; 
she is still semibarbaric. For which fact trav- 
ellers with a spoonful of imagination ought to 
be grateful. Spain is a laggard in the proces- 
sion of the nations; yet she is still in the proces- 

269 



MADRID 

sion. And she is not decadent. The Moors 
left their impress on Spanish culture, but per- 
haps their importance has been exaggerated. 
Moorish architecture with its lace-like fioritura 
in ornamentation is marvellous to behold. The 
Alhambra is an Arabian Nights dream, though 
its fantastic beauty is outweighed by Spanish 
Gothic; the cathedral at Seville is infinitely 
more inspiring. It has been the good luck or 
the misfortune of Spain that her arts came to 
her from the outside : Flemings, Italians, French, 
and Moors. Even El Greco, who is more Span- 
ish than Velasquez, was not a Spaniard. Ribera, 
despite his powerful personahty, derived from 
Caravaggio; while Velasquez, half Portuguese, 
is the glory of Spain, the glory of the world. 

The best Spanish dancing is not to be found 
in Spain to-day. You must go to Paris for 
Otero and Carmencita. Nor is the most char- 
acteristic cookery in Spain; at least, not in 
Madrid. The greatest Spanish opera was com- 
posed by the Frenchman Bizet. Merimee has 
given the world veracious Spanish types. What 
does it matter if they are operatic? Carm.en 
could not have been a gipsy, and Senora Bazan 
has proved that the cigarette girls of Seville are 
moral and hard-working; but the Carmen legend 
persists, it will always persist. Madrid is not 
the city to spear beloved and familiar Spanish 
character. Nor is Seville, for that matter; Se- 
ville out of season. During Easter week, when 
the city is masquerading, your taste for the 

270 



MADRID 

footlights is gratified. Seville is then more 
Spanish than Spain. It is Toledo, only a few 
hours from Madrid, or, indeed, any of the small 
towns off the main travelled highways, that 
gives you a taste of real Spain. Granada is 
now a commonplace commercial community. 
Its charm has vanished. It needs summer 
moonlight to recreate the magic of the Ajhambra. 

To tear one's self away from beloved Paris 
wKen on the threshold of the season 'is a painful 
experience, for in the Louvre is the art of all 
lands — even if the Velasquezes have been 
reduced to that s^olitary an.d superb portrait of 
the Infanta Margarita. But a sure way to 
accelerate your departure is to go to the Opera 
and hear a performance of Die Walklire. This 
we did, and longed for Spain — or New York. 
Dear old Deln\as as a goatlike Wotan, Mother 
Grand jean as Briinnhilde (it is a toss-up who is 
shriller of lung, Breval or Grandjean) and Jour- 
net as Hunding ! The busy Httle director, Mes- 
sager, conducted as if he had to catch a train 
for the suburbs. (He had.) Poor Wagner ! 
One missed the milHonaire Chauchard, who 
usually occupied that stage-box planted at the 
side of Hunding's hut. And one also missed 
Wagnerian atmosphere. Like the fooHsh father 
in Charpentier's Louise, you shake your fist at 
the opera-house, exclaiming "Oh, Paris!" 

It was without regret, then, that we took our 
allotted seats in the southern express, bound for 
Madrid via Hendaye-Irun. It is the swiftest 

271 



MADRID 

way to reach Spain; also the most expensive. 
You leave the Orleans station at 12:17 o'clock 
and ought to be in the Spanish capital twenty- 
six hours later. A noticeable slowing down 
after Irun and a slackness in the service remind 
you that you are on Spanish soil. But you miss 
a lot on this night trip. Bordeaux is viewed by 
daylight, Bayonne is not. Getting to Madrid 
in such short order has its renunciations. On 
the other hand, it is exhilarating to go to sleep 
at Irun — where you change cars, and see that 
your trunks accompany you — and awaken in 
staring sunshine and read the name of some 
station in the wildest region of rock and desert 
and mountain. Torquemada ! You shiver and 
dream of the Inquisition, though Lea has par- 
tially dissipated its legend. But there it is — 
Torquemada. There are goats, too, and men a 
world too large for the donkeys they so lazily 
bestride. The scenery is volcanic; no trees, 
no water, no green. The sun blazes over these 
burnt-up stretches of stone and sand. How 
can life be supported in such a sterile land? 
Presently you are reminded of Mexico. Adobe 
huts, the same sort of humans, earrings, wide 
trousers, conical hats, and the inevitable don- 
key or mule. The few women are frowsy rather 
than picturesque. The stations are miserable 
affairs. It .may be admitted that the first peep 
at Spain is not reassuring. What a different 
impression when one enters by way of Gib- 
raltar-Algeciras. Southern Spain is entrancing. 

272 



MADRID 

The climate is mild and soothing to travel-worn 
nerves. 

Madrid, a middle-class provincial city, is one 
that proved an agreeable disappointment. You 
hear so much of its dulness, its dirtiness, its 
high prices, its indifference toward strangers, 
and its lack of charm that when you have gone 
about for a few hours you exclaim against such 
slanders. High priced are the hotels on the 
Puerta del Sol and noisy. But .no one who 
knows the ropes goes to them. As board and 
lodging are, as a rule, engaged at once, you may 
be asked one hundred pesetas or francs a day 
at a so-called fashionable house. Go, however, 
to a retired and admirable caravansary and a 
chamber with board for two will cost only fifty 
francs. Of course, almost every hotel has its 
drawbacks in Madrid. We looked out from the 
balcony (a national institution) on the noisy 
Calle del Principe and can vouch for the state- 
ment that many Spaniards never go to bed in the 
night-time. Such gabbling. Such smoking — 
the tobacco in Spain is strong, cheap, and of 
good flavour — such quarrelling and laughter. 
And from neighbouring balconies voices would 
join in the discussion. A mandolin was plucked 
and a voice hummed passionately and out of 
tune. The material for romance was close at 
hand, but we were too sleepy to appreciate it. 
The Ferrer afifair was agitating all Spain that 
week — he was shot on October 13 — and the 
Puerta del Sol was jammed by sullen crowds. 

273 



MADRID 

We saw no overt acts of violence, but one could 
note that the temper of the populace was ugly. 
Perhaps it was because so much conversational 
steam was let off during the night that the 
Barcelona violence was not repeated at Madrid. 
We wisely held our peace on the subject; while 
the Spaniard is the politest person in the world, 
his politics must be respected. Quite as many 
approved of Ferrer's execution as execrated it; 
that is, in Madrid. 

We said that the Spaniard is polite. It is 
true. He is sincere, in a grave, virile manner. 
His treatment of the Americans proves it. The 
bitterness still rankles, yet he talks frankly and 
tells you that Spain is well rid of Cuba and the 
Philippines. It is impossible to doubt him. 
Madrid is second-rate, no doubt, but it is a 
homelike town, where you are not stared to 
death, where no one is in a hurry, for the 
motto is still maiiana; where the men are better 
looking than the women; one looks in vain for 
the slender Goya majas, with the saddleback, 
the dusky green eyes, the comb, mantilla, and 
fan; instead are mediocre imitations of Paris; 
numerous fat ladies, as many brown haired as 
black, rice powder on sallow skins, feminine 
moustaches, lace scarfs, fans, of course, no eyes 
of midnight hue, and no beauties. The cafes are 
comfortable, the beer is fair — a Spanish Pilsner 
— sHghtly sweet, brewed by the ubiquitous 
German. The beggars are a terrible nuisance, 
they are everywhere. And such cripples ! Vic- 

274 



MADRID 

tor Hugo could have found new patterns for his 
Cour des Miracles in Madrid. Repulsive half- 
men jerk your coat tail, asking alms in the name 
of Christ. Goya-like hags and children afflicted 
with sores that revolt your senses supplicate. 
You sit at a cafe table. At once a blind family 
appears and a concert begins. Each member 
plays an instrument (the humble ocarina is in 
vogue here) ; or an orchestra of blind men makes 
hideous the afternoon. Not once do you hear 
a strain of Spanish music from these perambulat- 
ing noise makers. But you give them something. 
Every one does. The temper of the Spanish is 
lenient toward its beggars. 

In vain we sought the so-called Flamenca 
dancers; the dreariest dancing is in Madrid. 
Later, in Seville, we saw the genuine dances 
and were very much surprised. There is little 
excitement, beauty, character, in this caper- 
ing of a half dozen sallow alleged gipsies who, 
when smiling, displayed a half inch of pink 
gums. Zuloaga has trapped the t3^e to per- 
fection, and in Spain, with its cruel, diffused 
light, you understand the patchwork of his 
colour, his use of primary tints. You meet his 
old women beggars and gipsies all over Spain. 

The Madrilenian eschews the national danc- 
ing; he seems ashamed of it. The bull-fighting 
is going the same way, though it may not die 
out for a century. Our first bull-fight was a 
fizzle. We prefer an abattoir. To be frank, 
the sport is sillier than football, though not as 

275 



MADRID 

cruel. The meanest feature is not the slaughter 
of mild old cattle but the occasional disembow- 
elment of a horse. The toreadors, matadors, 
picadors are operatic creatures, more spoiled 
than Italian tenors and thrice as useless; other- 
wise the massed impression is gay and worth the 
trouble of gaining. As it is with the dancing so 
with the eating. Real Spanish cookery is only 
to be had in some humble restaurant. The 
noble garlic (ajo), so happy an ingredient in 
salad, is absent at hotel tables. Peppery dishes 
are missing; too much deference is paid to for- 
eign palates. It is the same with sauerkraut in 
Germany, with macaroni in Italy, with frogs' 
legs in France. So much fun has been poked 
at national dishes that Senor Gomez told us the 
Spanish have become sensitive on the subject 
of garlic. But we had tortilla con jamon 
(omelet with ham), renones a la brochette 
(kidneys), pescado frito and puchero (pot au 
feu), with its garbanzos (white beans). Ga- 
spacho we did not taste, nor the famous olla 
podrida. 

Here is an average menu for luncheon: En- 
tremeses : (olives, radishes, butter) ; ostras (small 
oysters, metallic in flavour) ; tortilla a la Fran- 
cesca (omelet); entrecot a la bordelesa; den ton 
salsa verde (a good fish); fiambres a I'aspic; 
pasteles variados (pastry); quesos y frutas 
(fruit), washed down with either a fiery Valde- 
penas, a fiery Spanish Burgundy, or a smooth 
Rio Romay. This at the regular hotel table 

276 



MADRID 

d'hote at the Inglese. Nevertheless there is a 
little Spanish restaurant on the Rue du Helder, 
Paris, where the food is more national. 

The street cries, never ending, are interesting. 
We heard one old woman with a voice like 
Scalchi's, when that singer had a quartet in her 
larynx. We confess, however, that the most 
Spanish looking woman we ever saw was not in 
Spain, but on the boards of the Metropolitan 
Opera House. Her name is Lilli Lehmann, and 
she sang the part of Donna Anna in Don Gio- 
vanni. Tall, grave, raven of hair, with eyes 
like stars, she was the Spanish aristocrat. She 
revealed race and character. Certainly none 
of the prognathic jawed Hapsburgs look so 
Spanish or so noble; which illustrates what 
Henry James once wrote in his tale The Real 
Thing. In this case truth was inferior to fiction. 

The secular charm of Madrid is in its wide 
avenues, such as the Calle de Alcala, its park, 
the walk through the Prado, its royal palace, a 
few churches, a few public buildings. The 
Prado is simply a boon on a hot day — and it's 
a fierce sun that beats on the city, treacherous 
as is its night air. Across the way a new hotel 
has been erected by the Ritz-Carlton Company. 
The prices are sufficiently exalted to make the 
hotel men on the Puerta del Sol open their 
ingenuous eyes in astonishment. 

In conclusion, we warn the timid tourist that 
he is quite as apt to lose his baggage in Italy as 
in Spain ; tha t travel is by no means a hardship, 

277 



MADRID 

though there ought to be more corridor cars; 
that the railway restaurants are better than 
any of the same class in America; that the 
Spanish are kind-hearted, considerate, unfail- 
ingly courteous, ever optimistic, and anxious 
that the golden shower of foreign money be 
diverted from France and Italy to their own 
tremendously romantic land. 



278 



VI 
DEAR OLD DUBLIN 



After all, blood is thicker than water; in 
Ireland it is even thicker than whisky. I for- 
got the joys of Vienna, the trim existence of 
them that reside in Berlin on the River Spree, 
when, after a ride through the Happy Valley, 
Wales, I found myself on the Irish Sea, then on 
Irish soil at Kingstown. The reason I speak of 
blood is because I'm half Irish by descent and 
was brought up in the good old-fashioned beliefs : 
Ireland, the Isle of Saints; Ireland, oppressed by 
the Sassenach; Ireland, the land of the bravest 
men and best women; Ireland, the most beau- 
tiful country on God's footstool. 

I had read and believed in the Ireland of 
Samuel Lover and Charles Lever, of Carlton 
and Dion Boucicault's Colleen Bawn, of Tom 
Moore, and Father Burke. The New Ireland, 
the Celtic Awakening, the new-fangled fairies 
of Yeats, the mystic music of A. E. (George 
Russell), the exquisite caroUing of a younger 
choir, the bitter-sweet pathos and humour and 
dramatic power of John Synge — all these were 

279 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

not in existence when I was a lad; nor were 
Lady Gregory's gods and fighting men and the 
epical Cuchalain and Deirdre. Instead, I was 
fed upon splendid legends of Fenianism. My 
grandfather, James Gibbons, had been vice- 
president of the American organisation. 

You may imagine what a different Ireland 
was unfolded when I read T. W. Rolleston's 
Anthology of Celtic Poetry. The '^natural 
magic" of Matthew Arnold is not missing in 
the new men and women; the ancient and 
fascinating poetic potion of smiles, tears, and 
tenderness is as cunningly concocted as ever, 
for as long as there is a Celt on the rind of our 
planet there you will find sentiment and ro- 
mance. All the busy professors of criticism 
cannot kill romance with their little metallic 
essays. Romance is out of fashion? Go to 
Ireland and see if it is. 

"An' I wisht I was in Ireland the livelong 
day . . . Och ! Corrymeela an' the blue sky 
over it." Well, I got there last June, and, 
while I didn't find Moira O'Neill's Corrymeela, 
I discovered Dublin; also discovered that the 
Irish of Ireland don't come over from Liverpool 
on cattle boats, as Bernard Shaw ingenuously 
suggested; nevertheless, the race is much more 
like the men and women of Synge, Yeats, Lady 
Gregory, Martyn, George Moore, Birmingham, 
Dr. Hyde, and Shaw than the stage Irishman 
of a past generation. (I even discovered that 
the Celtic Casanova and the Irish Ibsen were 

280 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

familiarly called Jarge Moore and Barney 
Shaw.) The modern Irishman is rather melan- 
choly, a pessimist born, and his womenkind 
are the reverse: robust, hopeful, hard-working. 

I've reached Kingstown. The trip across 
was ideal. The British fleet is in the harbour. 
Everywhere bunting, gaiety, and patriotic 
demonstrations. The Irishman at home is 
very English. In the general excitement I for- 
got to sphygmograph my feelings, and presently, 
after a brief, bumpy railway ride, found myself 
in a hotel on Sackville Street. The view either 
way was impressive. But if mighty London ap- 
pears down at the heel after a sojourn in Berlin, 
then in a figurative sense Dublin is simply bare- 
footed. 

It is very dirty. There are too many beggars; 
beggary in Ireland is raised to the dignity of a 
sport. Buxom women with nursing children 
implore you for a penny, and if you refuse, smile 
at you so forgivingly that you double in your 
tracks to make speedy reparation. The Irish 
are good-humoured, and it must be their trans- 
plantation that makes them less so in America. 
That they are as humorous as witty I am not 
so sure. John Quinn contends that they are 
not, but he underwent the rigours of Irish Players' 
ructions in New York and Philadelphia, and the 
enormous imbeciHty of that affair was enough 
to make any one a sceptic on the subject. 

I couldn't help thinking that the public build- 
ings would be less mouldy after a house cleaning. 

281 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

Ireland, like all Europe, is more in need of bath- 
tubs than armaments. Cleanliness there would 
be greater than godHness. A first-class hotel 
there is not in the place, though the national 
cookery is better than in London. The best 
roast beef in the British Isles is to be found in 
Dublin, but that fact is a thrice-told tale, like 
the excellence of the porter. There are few 
restaurants; one dines at his hotel, though 
there is an excellent French cafe and one spot 
at least where Pilsner is kept by a man with a 
Celtic name all wool and a yard wide. 

As for home rule, Ulster's wooden oaths and 
wooden rifles, the revival of the spirit of Boyne 
Water, ''Croppies lie down," and Ulsteria, I 
found few traces. Throughout the south there 
is but Httle enthusiasm for home rule, though 
no actual hostility. ''What is home rule?" one 
Dublinite asked of me. "How can any one say 
what it will be like?" he continued. He was a 
good Catholic, but he had his misgivings about 
increasing the power of the Church in the land, 
and that is what is feared. George Moore is 
not the only Irish writer who sees through the 
hole in the millstone. The old faith is strong in 
the Ould Dart, but there is a growing scepti- 
cism as to the value of apolitical clergy; further- 
more, there are too many able-bodied lads and 
lassies taking orders and filling convents when 
they ought to be better employed in fathering 
and mothering families. There are several ways 
of race suicide. Ireland is practically short of 

282 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

people, for, if the emigration has fallen off, so 
has the birth-rate, and a country peopled by 
saints would not be a country worth living in. 
Gerald (Jeremiah is the real name) O'Donovan's 
novel, Father Ralph, is conceded to contain 
wholesome truths. And it is by no means an 
indictment of religion, only of the creaking ma- 
chinery of a certain Irish clericalism. 

You see, I've reached Dublin, but I haven't 
left the hotel. Roast beef, Guinness's stouts, 
and pohtics kept me indoors, and, with no 
Baedeker to help, I was forced to be my own 
guide. (Herr Baedeker hasn't thus far conde- 
scended to include Ireland in his invaluable list 
of travel books, and, oddly enough, Dublin con- 
tains little literature on the subject.) 

n 

Thus spake the ancient Stanihurst: 
"The seat of the citie is of all sides pleasant, 
comfortable, and wholesome. If you would 
traverse hills, they are not far off. If Cham- 
paign land, it lieth of all parts. If you would be 
dehted with fresh water, the famous river called 
the Liffie, named of Ptolome Lybnium, runneth 
fast by. If you will take the view of the sea, it 
is at hand." 

This chronicler did not exaggerate. The air 
in Dublin is charged with salt odours. You sniff 
the sea fish. My hereditary enthusiasms re- 
vived when I found myself in front of Trinity 

283 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

College and the Bank of Ireland, and how charm- 
ing the lake in Stephen's Green and the winding 
walks of this park ! A more impressive building 
than that of the Law Courts is seldom seen, and 
to match it there is the Custom House. As for 
churches, there is no lack. St. Patrick's Cathe- 
dral is a noble pile, so is Christ Church Cathe- 
dral. The believer in the old faith must be 
saddened at the service in St. Patrick's — the 
Church of England and St. Patrick ! — but for 
all that it is a noble place of preaching duly 
arresting. 

I went over to the procathedral to an early 
mass and was touched by the fervid piety of the 
congregation and appalled by the abundant 
evidences of poverty. Outside of Spain no such 
poverty is to be found, and in many parts of the 
island it is worse, and with intemperance as an 
accompaniment. Why? Is it altogether the 
fault of the Sassenach, the hated but much- 
courted Saxon? Admiring the time-battered 

— scarred by the revengeful hands of patriots 

— statue of King William by Grinling Gibbons 
on the college green, I passed within the his- 
torical precincts of Trinity, passed the statues 
of Burke and Goldsmith, and, mindful of Bishop 
Berkeley, Dean Swift, Robert Emmet, Thomas 
Moore, the learned Ussher, Edmund Burke, not 
forgetting my friend, the late Professor Edward 
Dowden, I reached the trees in the park opposite 
the Kildare Club, at the corner of Nassau Street, 
and smoked the pipe of peace under a soft blue 

284 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

sky, through which wind-propelled white cloud- 
hummocks lazily passed. 

This, I said to myself, is the real Ireland, not 
the too busy, commercial Belfast or the prosper- 
ous '' far-down" of Donegal. I felt at home, as 
I never felt at home in Budapest. The two and 
three story houses across the park recalled my 
native city of Philadelphia; even the accent of 
the DubHn people was Hke music in my ears — 
streaked, as it was, with an insinuating brogue, 
but infinitely purer Enghsh than the grotesque 
cockney accent of London. To be sure, I had 
dined on wonderful mutton, washed it down 
with appropriate fluids, and was smoking good 
tobacco; therefore cheerfully disposed. In my 
hand I held a blackthorn. Afar came the sound 
of the tram-car on Nassau Street. I thought of 
the times when James van Gogh Gregg, better 
known as El Greggo, raised his mellifluous voice 
in the stadium, or when Dean Swift coined epi- 
grams striking dismay in the heart of Delany 
of Delville; of Henry Grattan and Wolfe Tone; 
of Daniel O'Connell, and the night that Larry 
was stretched — "Oh, the hemp will be soon 
around my throttle and choke my poor windpipe 
to death!" — of Handel and his Messiah, sung 
in the old Music Hall centuries ago; of Samuel 
Lover and his famous grandson, Victor Herbert; 
of Harry Lorrequer; of unhappy Oscar 0' Flah- 
erty Wilde — a more unreal figure to-day than 
either Harry Lorrequer or Charles O'Malley — 
and of cabbages and kings. 

285 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

Then the omnipresent guide begged me to 
visit the interior of the college, but for that day, 
at least, I refused. I dislike relics, muddy por- 
traits; above all, I dislike inhuman documents. 
Day dreams and soothing tobacco were more in 
the Celtic key than futile rummaging in the 
coprolitic mud of antiquity. However, the 
guide was too decent a chap to insist — only 
Irish-Americans, so-called, are insistent — and 
he sat him down hard by and smoked his pipe. 
Then he fell to conversing. 

''Why does that President of yours call him- 
self an Irishman?" he asked. (My speech be- 
trayed my nationaUty.) I was startled. Had 
Dr. Wilson been discovered? I put this to the 
guide. He in his turn was puzzled. 

"Wilson," he retorted, "I don't know any 
President named Wilson in the States. I mean 
a man who calls himself Bryan, the real Presi- 
dent, I take it, and not an Irishman, by the 
same token, for no Irishman would drop the 
'O' from his name; no Irishman would drink 
grape juice; above all, no true Irishman would 
change his faith." And with that he left me 
to my thoughts. 

An Irishman, I reflected, is either fiddling in 
the zenith with the archangels or he is wrang- 
ling in the nethermost hell with Satan and his 
spit and spawn. The Irish and the Poles are 
chips off the same temperamental block. 

Naturally, I visited the Castle and a dozen 
buildings of historic interest, veritable treasure- 

286 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

troves for antiquarians; but I was held in the 
spell of the streets and the look in the faces of 
passers-by, or by the fair lawns of Phoenix Park. 
I know I should have been overcome by the 
prospect of Sackville Street, the Nelson Pillar, 
and the stately Post-Office, but I preferred 
the small and altogether attractive Zoological 
Garden, where the peacocks, cranes, and ducks 
troop after you crying for crackers and the 
lions roar like Irish sucking doves. It is not a 
large collection, this, but within its limits it is 
complete; the lions are numerous and the 
primates true natives. Far more real to me 
was Chapelizod, where Isod or Isolde of Malory's 
romance walked and talked in company with 
Brangaene. Nothing but a memory, not even a 
handful of stone marks the spot. In Dublin 
City there was at one time Izod's Tower on the 
walls, but for a sight of the living Isolde you 
must go to Gotham, when Olive Fremstad sings 
and Arturo Toscanini conducts. The Metro- 
politan Opera House is now the only Chapelizod. 
You will Hke Grafton Street, and if you are 
a mere man, Duke near Grafton Street. (This 
is a secret like the pattern in the carpet of Henry 
James; but I don't mind tehing you that Pil- 
sner from Pilsen is very real at that spot.) 
What boots it to struggle in chill prose with 
descriptions of Bray Head, of Dalkey, or Killi- 
ney Bay, and Sorrento? Yes, an Irish Sorrento, 
with its cup of blue liquid and its shore an 
emerald green curve of trees. You remember 

287 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

Walter Pater's slighting criticism of Alpine lakes 
as ''pots of blue paint"? "The pots" are here, 
marvellously cerulean, as a background the 
Wicklow Mountains. No wonder you think 
of Sorrento, the Bay of Naples, even of Vesuvius, 
for here towers the peak of Sugarloaf. Beyond 
the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains is truly a 
sainted land, holy with beauty, Glendalough, 
the Vale of Ovoca, " the meeting of the waters," 
Powerscourt, and gardens that haunt the mem- 
ory. You forget the blood-drenched history of 
the countryside, forget Donnybrook Fair, the 
Blarney Stone, and the jaunting-cars, and only 
enjoy this beauty; and soon the chords of pa- 
triotism sound and you feel proud to call your- 
self Irish, or even half Irish. The very soil is 
sacred with its bones of the martyred dead. I 
became so overwrought that to restore the bal- 
ance I motored back to DubHn to see the Hon- 
ourable Richard Croker of Crokersville, and a 
grand place Himself has, a show-place for every 
one that visits Dublin. 

The little streets and dirty alleys are not to 
be missed. There, as in Naples, you come to 
grips with the population. Never once did I 
hear a solitary soul whistle The Valley Lay 
Smihng Before Me (to the tune of Pretty Girl 
Milking the Cow), or The Harp That Once 
Thro' Tara's Halls, or The Wearing of the Green; 
instead, ragtime and vulgar London music-hall 
ditties were sung or piped. In an ugly, crowded 
street full of Sunday-morning drunkards and 

288 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

leading to St. Patrick's Cathedral I saw a poster 
advertising breakfast food. A militant suffra- 
gette is depicted behind the bars in jail. She is 
emaciated from self-imposed starvation, but 
when shown the food by the keeper, what all the 
king's horses and all the king's men couldn't 
accomplish with this petticoated Humpty- 
Dumpty, the appetising food is supposed to do. 
She clamours for it, and the moral is irresistibly 
conveyed: even the most stubborn suffragette 
must eat our patent food ! Great are the uses 
of advertisement. 

My second visit to Dublin was not as pleasant 
as the first. I went over from Holland and 
landed in the very heat and disorder of the 
strike. Now, the striking Irishman is not a 
pleasant companion in New York; in Dublin 
he is far worse. Not for me to discuss the eco- 
nomical cause of the strike, but they tell a pretty 
story of starvation wages and exhausting labour 
hours. The employers have their side of the 
question. I never wish to see again the panic 
which occurred during the funeral of the unlucky 
James Nolan, whose skull had been battered in 
during a shindy with the police. It was ter- 
rifying, as much so to me in my hotel window 
facing on Sackville Street, near the Pillar, as 
to the mob that was '^rushed" by the constabu- 
lary. If such treatment were accorded the pub- 
lic at one of our gatherings in the streets, ven- 
geance would be swift. I quite agree with those 
who think the police were too brutal with their 

289 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

own people; not that the rioting Irishman Is a 
pleasing spectacle, but in this case it was the 
women and children who were the sufferers. 
I heard, too, that Nolan was not the ''I'm blue 
mouldy for want of a batin' " type of man. Mr. 
H. J. Howard in his book on Dublin quotes 
Giraldus Cambrensis: ''Perchance it is the chas- 
tisement of God, whereby these lands are suf- 
fered to struggle continually one with the other, 
so that neither is England ever wholly victo- 
rious, nor Ireland thoroughly subdued." I sup- 
pose a thousand years hence there will still be 
an Irish question. 

Ill 

During his last pilgrimage to New England 
Henry James tells of the "emotion of recogni- 
tion" he experienced when coming face to face 
with some specimens of Monet and other French 
impressionists in a most unexpected place. 
Evidently, for him Massachusetts and Monet did 
not effectively modulate. The anecdote threw 
much light on the artistic bias of the James 
temperament. I enjoyed the same sort of a 
thrill when I first visited the Municipal Gallery 
on Harcourt Street, although the primary rea- 
son of my presence in Dublin was the prospect 
of studying the collection of modern art gath- 
ered there through the efforts of Sir Hugh Lane. 
I was not disappointed. It is the finest assem- 
blage of certain artists outside of the Luxem- 

290 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

bourg Gallery, Paris, and the Mesdag Gallery 
at The Hague. Not London, not New York can 
boast a better Edouard Manet than the large 
canvas, Eva Gonzalez, or the indescribably col- 
oured Concert in the Tuileries Garden (with its 
dimly descried portrait of Charles Baudelaire). 

There are several Claude Monets of various 
periods, all masterpieces. Renoir's Umbrellas 
is striking, while the names of J. E. Blanche, 
Pissarro, Vuillard, Degas, Le Sidaner, Mancini 
(too many to be effective), Corot, Barye (his 
oils), Troyon, Fantin-Latour, Fromentin, Cour- 
bet, Harpignies, Diaz, Gerome, Bonvin, Rous- 
seau, and a splendid study by Puvis de Cha- 
vannes, Boldini, Monticelli are not missing, nor 
is Daumier (a noble version of his Don Quixote 
and Sancho Panza); also Cottet, James Maris, 
Mauve, Alfred Stevens, Legros, Mesdag, and 
others may be seen. In the British section 
there are to be found the names of Brangwyn, 
Charles Conder, whose fame since his death has 
justly grown by leaps and bounds, also his 
posthumous prices, Gerald Festus Kelly (a 
discreet-toned portrait of a lovable Irish gentle- 
woman), Simeon Solomon, Watts, D. Y. Cam- 
eron, Wilson Steer, Charles Ricketts, John 
Constable, Sickert, Albert Moore, Whistler, 
Rothenstein, George Clausen, and C. H. Shan- 
non (The brilliant Lady with the Green Fan). 

The Irish section is well to the fore, as it 
should be. Nathaniel Hone, with his simple, 
sincere landscapes and marines; John Lavery, 

291 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

as ever, distinguished; George Russell, John 
Butler Yeats, Mark Fisher, J. J. Shannon, Os- 
borne, Roche, Duffy, William Orpen, O'Meara, 
Roderick O'Conor. There are several rooms 
devoted to original drawings, the Millets com- 
ing out strong. The gallery of portraits is par- 
ticularly interesting. Among the sculptures 
you will note the Age of Bronze, the Man with 
the Broken Nose, the Honourable George Wynd- 
ham, Bernard Shaw, Le Pretre, Frere et Soeur, 
by Auguste Rodin, of which the Age of Bronze 
is the most important. The Shaw portrait bust 
is too ''slicked up" for either Rodin or St. 
Bernard. Himself is neither so handsome nor so 
vapid looking. Rodin must have executed this 
marble in one of his perverse moods, possibly 
saying to himself: ''Go to ! I'll show the world 
that this Puck-like Irishman is in reality a 
conventional citizen." Certainly he has suc- 
ceeded. 

Barye's bronzes there are, and works by Furse, 
Lanteri, John Hughes, PaulBartlett (New York), 
V. Riviere, Dalou, and the gifted Jacob Epstein 
(New York). I must not forget the names of 
John Sargent, Jongkind, Augustus John, a mural 
decoration, or a portrait of Daumier by Daubigny 
— an unusual combination. The Beheading 
of John the Baptist, by Puvis, is a large canvas. 
I prefer the reduced variation of the same theme 
by Puvis in the gallery of John Quinn, Esq., 
New York, as being richer in colour quality and 
more intense in conception. An amazing col- 

292 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

lection. An amazing experience, indeed, to find 
such art near the banks of the drab River Liffey. 
And what a tribute to the taste and generosity 
of the donor, Sir Hugh Lane. I hope some day 
to see the pictures housed in more commodious 
quarters. My abiding impressions of the va- 
rious visits I made to Harcourt Street are the 
two Manets, especially the Concert. 

A second artistic surprise was to find in the 
little known (that is in America) National Gal- 
lery of Ireland (of which Sir Hugh Lane is 
now the director) an array of canvases of prime 
quality, such as examples by Mantegna, Titian 
— the Disciples at Emmaus, otherwise known 
as the Tablecloth (not the original, but a varia- 
tion?) — a beautiful Moroni, a fine Rembrandt, 
Jondarus, a Hvely little virgin and child by 
Adrian Ysenbrandt, a Van der Heist, a Frans 
Hals, a version of his Beach Boy at Antwerp, 
Botticelli's moving portrait of a violinist, Ruys- 
dael, Ribera, Antonio da Solari, two Bonafazios, 
Carpaccio, Watteau, Reynolds, Jan Steen, Goya, 
Wilson, Cuyp, Raeburn, Thomas Lawrence (por- 
trait of John Philpot Curran), Wouter Knyff, 
Gainsborough, Chardin, Coello, and in the Na- 
tional Portrait Gallery section characteristic 
heads of Jonathan Swift and several of Samuel 
Lover, one by Harwood, the other self-painted. 
A handsome old gentleman he must have been, 
and a versatile. He is Victor Herbert's grand- 
father — a title that alone gives him celebrity. 
Verily, you exclaim as you go out upon aristo- 

293 



DEAR OLD DUBLIN 

cratic Merrion Square, recalling in appearance 
both Washington Square and Rittenhouse Square 
(Philadelphia), verily, Dubhn is the great unex- 
plored for the majority of travellers. 



294 



VII 

FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

Naturally, you must be fat, else a trip to 
northwestern Bohemia, where Hes the charming 
little town of Marienbad, may result in the ac- 
quisition of avoirdupois, for, oh, brethren ! Pilsen 
is only a few hours away — Pilsen, where the 
amber brew is beautifully brewed. Eating, too, 
is one of the seven arts. And once in Pilsen, 
farewell to shapes of slimness, farewell normal 
necks and wrists and waists. Jules Laforgue, 
that brilliant young Frenchman who was psy- 
chologist before poet, remarked upon the pe- 
culiar arrogance and imperturbability that large 
majestic women exhibit. His explanation of 
their attitude toward life proves his keen vision. 
^'Cet avant de notre personne," he declares, 
surely breeds a feeling of superiority, leads to a 
pompous gait and a condescending manner. 
Wasn't it Dickens who compared women of cer- 
tain weight to a ship of battle with all sails set? 
When you have achieved the eminence from 
which you gaze across your own bulk at your fel- 
low beings, then it is time for a reduction cure 
at Marienbad. I had, some time ago, reached 
that interesting period when my friends didn't 

295 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

hesitate to poke me in the ribs — or where the 
ribs should have been — and advised me to join 
the fat men's club, any member of which must 
not weigh less than two hundred pounds, else be 
expelled from that paradise of clambakes and 
beefsteak dinners. So I went to Marienbad, 
and, incredible as it may sound, stopped at 
Pilsen only long enough to drink a glass of water. 
The water was not cold, though the heat was 
tropical, and it cost one penny for the glass. 
But I paid it. I had taken the first step in the 
steep path that leads up the mount of martyr- 
dom. 

Marienbad is not difficult of access. Five 
hours from Berlin on the fast express (there are 
slow ones in Germany), a day from Paris, and, 
if you happen to be at Karlsbad, you can go over 
in less than two hours. It may be that I am 
not a fanatic on the subject of fighting fat. 
Every train-load winding through the valleys 
and over the hills of Bohemia carries sceptics. 
Your reasonable objections are pooh-poohed out 
of court, and the fabulous tales are related of 
friends losing ten pounds a day for thirty days 
and then gaining thirty pounds in thirty hours 
— or some such rigmarole. The number of 
Germans I met after my arrival on the Kaiser- 
strasse, the main street, coQvinced me that the 
Lord loves a good Har, no matter his nationality. 
Two conspicuous things smote my consciousness 
when I had been ten minutes in Marienbad. 
One was the number of fat, healthy men and 

296 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

women; the other was the unusual display of 
food, whether in delicatessen shops, confection- 
ery stores, bakeries; food — and drink — is the 
staple of the place. It took some time before 
I conjoined these two signs and the closeness of 
cause and effect. After a tour of the restau- 
rants and cafes it burst upon me that the "cure" 
was only an incentive to hunger and thirst, that 
even if your particular hell was paved with good 
intentions, the temptations to gorge and guzzle 
were manifold. Where, this side of the fabled 
city in which roasted larks fall from the skies, 
can you find such a bewitching array of good 
things to eat as at Marienbad? The windows 
are stuffed to overflowing with fowl, game, fruit, 
and the toothsome cakes called oblaten. At 
dusk when you return from a thirteen-mile 
walk, footsore, thirsty, starving — you, being an 
obedient patient, have had cold ham, and, later, 
weak tea for dinner — the artful shopmen flaunt 
before your eyes a stupendous array of food and 
drink. You stand agape at the Tantalus vision, 
and then, if you are strong, you pass sadly on 
to more cold ham, more weak tea. I modified 
this first judgment later, for, in a collection of 
many thousand people, there are a few who are 
consistent, who adhere to the rules laid down by 
the doctors. However, the authorities shouldn't 
allow the weak-minded to be tempted. The 
shop-windows should be closed after dark, and 
the restaurants forced to hide their diners be- 
hind screens. An ascetic fresh from his Thebaid 

297 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

would shiver at the sight of all these well-fed 
persons stuffing meat — yes, and potatoes, too 

— and pouring down Pilsner from jugs fit for 
the throat of a giraffe. And further inviting 
the advances of old Uncle Uric (acid), as Acton 
Davies affectionately calls him. 

Infinitely discouraged, then, during my first 
evening, because of these pagan-like evidences of 
revolt, I could not help thinking of yEsop and his 
choice fable, wherein the members rise up in rebel- 
lion against the stomach and are speedily quelled 
by that organ. The doctors, I reflected, may 
prescribe the strictest regimen; the waters may 
be religiously drunk every morning, but at eight 
o'clock in the evening that primal old rebel, that 
Lucifer among the bodily organs — the stomach 

— will exact due toll and homage for the hard- 
ships imposed upon it during the daytime. 
Wondering why I did not stop over at Pilsen, 
I fell asleep and dreamed of a brewery in which 
the waiters and guests were awful-appearing 
skeletons. The next day I sought a physician. 
Both an individual and a type, he regarded me 
with cynical, roguish eyes. ''You Americans," 
he observed, ''expect to bolt your meals, take no 
exercise except in express elevators, then come 
to Marienbad and lose five pounds a day with- 
out feehng nervous. I don't believe in taking 
off fat too fast." Slap number two was this, 
and straight between the eyes. A doctor in full 
practice at Marienbad who didn't believe in 
rapid reduction ! He explained. I listened. 

298 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

Then I became humble and determined to give 
the ^'cure" a working chance. 

At six o'clock the next morning I was 
awakened by the solemn measures of a Bach 
choral played by the local orchestra, and as I 
dressed I Hstened to some excellent, old-fashioned 
overtures, seldom heard nowadays, from half- 
forgotten operas by Auber, Rossini, and Meyer- 
beer. They proved good company for the 
grey thoughts of the neophyte. Out upon the 
esplanade I fancied myself in fairy-land; it was 
the kind of operatic landscape one sees on the 
stage. The huge promenade was bustling with 
humans; men in silk hats and jackets; women 
in bath-robes, wearing diamonds; Gahcian Jews, 
with oily side-curls, their eyes bent on the earth, 
muttering prayers as they paraded; fat people 
and lean; fatter people than I ever saw before 
at a given point — and every one carrying grad- 
uated glasses, suggestively pharmaceutical — 
sipping, staring, chattering; above all, staring. 
Then there was a mad rush to a certain point; 
even the long Une of those who patiently awaited 
their turn at the spring was broken. Somebody 
of eminence approached. Looking very much 
like a prosperous Hebraic Wall Street banker, 
the King of England went by with a remarkably 
spry gait for a man of his years. He was ac- 
companied by his friend Captain Fitz Ponsonby 
and Sir Stanley Clark. 

We looked after him with the rest, and, as we 
were very curious, joined the thronging crowd 

299 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

that doged his movements. King Edward VII 
was very popular. The poor Polish Jews fairly 
worshipped him, for he was sympathetic. As 
if the earth contained no bomb-throwing as- 
sassins, the King of Great Britain and Emperor 
of the Indies came down every morning of his 
two weeks' sojourn at seven o'clock precisely. 
His valet handed him a glass, a glass tube, 
and a red napkin. He drank, walked, talked, 
and if the day were fine, laughed. Such a 
hearty, unaffected laugh you do not hear often 
from the lungs of a young man. Everything 
amused him. He had forgotten affairs of state, 
forgotten, too, tedious ceremonial. He wore a 
loose-fitting flannel or tweed and sported an 
Alpine stalker upon his imperial brow. When he 
stopped, several thousand people stopped; when 
he paused to pay a pretty shop-girl in the Colon- 
nade a comphment, a gratified murmur was heard 
in the vast mob. He had done a popular thing 
and that girl is marked for life. She will tell 
her grandchildren of the royal blue eyes and 
the perfect royal German accent. A few secret- 
service men kept close to the exalted visitor, but, 
as one old Bohemian said: ''The King of Eng- 
land can do what the King of Austria cannot, 
even in his own realm ! " 

The day the King of Greece appeared and with 
Sir Arthur Goschen stood and gossiped with 
Edward VII, excitement ran so high that the next 
day the Burgomaster plastered the town with 
the announcement that such enthusiasm must be 

300 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

gently discouraged. Karlsbad, boiling over with 
envy, was in the seventh heaven. ''Mobbed the 
King of England" was the head-line in the local 
newspapers. But when the King went over 
one afternoon to Karlsbad in a motor-car, he 
was literally forced to go indoors so persistent 
was the sightseeing crowd of that place. 

However, kings and dukes, princesses and 
dames of high degree are so many bubbles on 
the surface of the tranquil Marienbad waters. 
We go there to be cured — or to get a new appe- 
tite, or bath; and while it is mildly exhilarating 
to rub shoulders with the mighty ones of the 
earth, it is far more important to secure a seat 
for breakfast. 

Your water drunk, you go for your breakfast at 
Utscheg's. After many futile wanderings, climb- 
ing to Cafe Panorama or Cafe Egerlander for 
the first meal, I came to the conclusion that man 
may dispense with landscapes at dawn, if his 
coffee be near at hand. So to a modest chalet 
I repaired at eight o'clock, resolved to drink 
weak tea and eat but one soft-boiled egg. Alas ! 
I always drank coffee and took two eggs. My 
doctor had said: ''Do not starve yourself" — 
as he did not favour swift flesh reduction. After 
breakfast arose the important question of the 
day: which walk should one take? If you are 
not lucky enough to secure permission from your 
doctor to bathe at the Turkish or mud-baths 
there is nothing left for you but trotting. The 
walks of Marienbad ! It is a proud municipal 

301 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

boast that not in Bohemia is there such a variety 
of shaded, romantic, and toilsome walks. This 
seems to be true. The hills are not so high as at 
Karlsbad; they are prettier, and the sweep of 
country you catch at the top of the Cafe Pano- 
rama or Cafe Riibezahl is most inspiring. The 
Bavarian mountains in the dim distance and the 
dense Bohemian forests; a country that rolls 
with green reverberations in the golden sunshine, 
a naturally romantic landscape trained by ar- 
tistic gardeners; a mass of marble and granite 
structures, imposing in size, graceful in archi- 
tectural Hne; all these framed by pine-trees and 
a melting southern sky — you feel as you fill 
your lungs with the pure, sweet-smelling air, 
that there are few such spots as Marienbad on 
our globe. 

And the everlasting twistings and turnings 
of the forest paths; the mystic twihght of the 
wooded avenues; the sh^r ascent to some re- 
mote peak where coffee and conversation crown 
your tired feet for a small fee ! Then in some 
sudden secret glade which seems all your own, 
as you dream of St. Wenceslaus, the patron saint 
of Bohemia, of brave John Huss, or of the rus- 
tling melodies of Antonin Dvorak — you enjoy 
better in his native land his music — suddenly 
a ponderous figure bars your path. Mayhap 
you have heard it before you have seen it, an 
elephant crushing through the underbrake. It 
weighs at least three hundred, and smilingly 
attempts to pass. When fat meets fat then 

302 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

comes the tug of tact. Two hats are lifted as 
the weaker — the thinner — goes to the wall, or 
sits down, or cowers against the hillside. Thus 
is your dream disturbed a dozen times a day. 
As the monster puffs noisily from view you ten- 
tatively remark to your companion: "I hope 
I'm not as big as that animal," while the answer, 
though not consoling, is invariably the same: 
''No, but you soon will be if you don't obey the 
doctor." Yes, mild as are the injunctions of 
the doctor, he is not always obeyed. The spirit 
is wiUing but the flesh is ever athirst and ahun- 
gered. There are rainy days (and how it can 
rain in the land of the Czechs !), when the whole 
scheme of creation needs readjustment, not to 
mention this miserable Httle Marienbad. There 
are hot days when the thought of an ice-cream 
soda drives one almost delirious. There are 
sombre evenings, when, to see fat men drinking 
cool Pilsner — oh, why continue? These things 
happen to every one. They are not serious de- 
terrents to the good cause. There are brave 
days when you walk fifteen miles, hve on tea 
without milk or sugar, and spinach (doleful, 
gritty spinach), and the eternal ham; neverthe- 
less, the scales tell you agreeable news, and your 
head feels as cool, as empty as a gourd in a cellar. 
You pityingly sneer at the fattest man — he 
weighs over four hundred, wears a red necktie, 
and is always eating candy or ices — and you 
know that Hfe is worth while. The unhappy chap 
told me that formerly he was a chef at the royal 

303 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

palace, Potsdam, but champagne had been his 
ruin. The following season I was informed he 
died. One comical sight was the small peasant 
boy who followed him with a chair — he had to 
sit down every few minutes. He assured me 
that he had lost over one hundred pounds dur- 
ing the season. 

On fine days you occupy, if so inclined, the 
rustic spot where Goethe rested — he was a 
visitor in 182 1 — or else gaze upon the house 
where lived, in 1845, Richard Wagner. Chopin, 
too, was there in 1836. Then, after these 
sentimental pilgrimages, you become prosaic 
and have yourself weighed. You retire exult- 
ingly to a cafe, for you have lost ten pounds 
in ten days. How did it come about? Your 
doctor looks wise and tells you that the waters — 
Yes, the waters; rather not the waters, that is, 
no water at meals. The secret of Marienbad 
is yours when you have mastered this point. 
The waters are mild, almost tasteless; two or 
three glasses a day is all you are asked to con- 
sume. Glauber salts is the chief ingredient. At 
the Rudolfsquelle the relief from gouty pains 
is rapid. But are the waters everything at 
Marienbad? The answer is a decided negative. 
Remember that thousands are cured annually 
of various ills. Can it be done elsewhere ? Yes. 
In twenty-two days I lost twenty-two pounds. 
Walking, dieting, early in bed, early rising, in- 
comparably fresh air — all these make for 
health, for fat-destroying, for muscle-building, 

304 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

blood-purifying. Yet I affirm with all the 
solemnity of a man who won back his adipose 
tissue six months after his return to New York, 
that the secret of reduction is so simple that it 
usually escapes the attention of the patients 
who travel so many miles to find it. It is this: 
Don't drink with your meals — tea, coffee, 
water, wine, beer, vinegar, or poison — not a 
drop two hours before or after eating! All 
the mountain air, scenery, carbonic-acid waters 
avail not if you absorb liquids while you eat. 
This is the famous Schweniger cure that Bis- 
marck found so beneficial. If you plumply put 
the question to your doctor — there are hun- 
dreds of medical men camped in and about 
Marienbad — he is apt to answer you enig- 
matically. The full force of the discovery 
dawns on you after you leave the town. In 
Central Park you can take the waters at the 
pavilion, walk from Fifty-ninth to One Hundred 
and Tenth Streets and back, go home, eat break- 
fast, avoid liquids at meals, and four weeks later 
you will have pulled off from ten to twenty 
pounds. I know this from experience. But 
there is the sea trip; there is the fair land of 
Bohemia; there is Marienbad, a white city of 
miniature palaces and castellated heights — 
during moonlight the Cafe Riibezahl is like a 
frozen fairy-tale — with its air, its freedom from 
the fashionable crowds of hill-hemmed Karlsbad, 
its romantic surroundings, its moderate tariff, 
and its perpetual eating and drinking (such 

305 



FIGHTING FAT AT MARIENBAD 

cookery!), and its weighing machines. When 
you are tired of the music you get yourself 
weighed. When you are weary of walking you 
listen to the band. There are less interesting 
watering-places on the map than Marienbad — 
and there is always Pilsen forty miles away. So, 
if you would fight your fat pleasantly and dis- 
tribute your Yankee dollars — go to Marienbad, 
and don't forget to close your eyes when you 
pass the confectionery shops or the cafes. That 
way fat lies. 



306 



PART III 

SAND AND SENTIMENT 



I 

ATLANTIC CITY 

When in the course of human events it be- 
comes necessary for a man to study his own 
people, let him select the excellent old summer- 
time for such a purpose; let him go down to the 
sea in Pullmans or naphtha launches; let him, 
with observant and kindly eye, note the pecu- 
Harities of the nation in which he is an unimpor- 
tant factor, and he may see things — many 
things undreamed of in his Httle European- 
saturated philosophy. 

Let us pose a possible case. A traveller, rest- 
less because he has seen or fancied he has seen 
all Europe, resolves to stay on his native soil 
for one summer. From much globe-trotting he 
has not become blase, he still emulates Dr. S>tl- 
tax in his pursuit of the picturesque; but his 
conscience begins to ring accusatory alarm-bells. 
You know Sorrento, but do you know Cape 
May ? You have patrolled the beach at Scheve- 
ningen, but do you know the delights of Atlantic 
City's Boardwalk ? Can you offhand say whether 
Bailey's Beach has as good surf as Seabright? 
Newport vs. New Jersey. Do they sell you 
worse imitation Havanas at Southampton or at 

309 



ATLANTIC CITY 

Richfield Springs? Where is the most pessi- 
mistic beer served on the Atlantic coast? Can 
you answer one of these profoundly interesting 
questions ? 

Why? Because you don't know your own 
country. Because you don't know how it 
chooses to amuse itself during the heated term. 
Because you do know that it always rains in 
Salzburg; that it is always hot and high-priced 
in Paris; that you sit up too late in Berlin and 
retire too early in London. My possible case 
is not a representative American, though he is 
by no means a myth. You know him. I know 
him. And the sign whereby he may be recog- 
nised is this: his superior airs and his manner 
of calling a coloured waiter gar^on or Kellner. 
Otherwise he couldn't tell the difference between 
a Da Vinci and a Carlo Dolci, a Bach fugue and 
a Nuremberg sausage. The gilt of his too rapidly 
acquired culture is apt to become blurred by 
ocean's rude breezes. 

Consider me for the moment as one of those 
self-expatriated compatriots, but one of humble 
spirit, one wilUng to learn, and one to whom the 
great idea made a visit and a proposition. Sup- 
pose, said the tempter, you made the acquain- 
tance of the Americans at play ! Suppose you 
try to forget noisy New York for a day, a week, 
a month, and range boldly up and down seeking 
forth prey for your pen, recording daily what you 
see, imagining nothing but divining much. Sup- 
pose, in a word, you take a peep at the real world, 

310 



ATLANTIC CITY 

not at a few hundred luxurious people, and en- 
deavour to escape the obsession of those you 
fancy to .be the elect in art and life and litera- 
ture. What a ''bath of multitude" you will 
give your convention-weary soul; how you will 
refresh your eyes, too long accustomed to Broad- 
way and its brass bands! 

I confess I listened to the voice of the tempter, 
and here am I, in Atlantic City, quite obHvious 
to Budapest or Copenhagen and positively ab- 
sorbed in the novelty of the situation. For you 
it would be a thrice-told tale, signifying a sum- 
mer outing. For me it is as if I had fallen asleep 
in Peru and awakened in Philadelphia — with 
a difference. Consider me, then, as consulting 
time-tables, as discussing various routes to the 
sea. It was terra-nova for me. I saw with 
the eye of the newly born — at least, I hope I 
did. I confused the man in the office by asking 
for a first-class ticket for Atlantic City. He 
jeered. Then I remembered I was in the land 
of equality, where a man could make himself 
superior to his fellow beings and also uncom- 
fortable by paying for seats in a parlor coach. 

The psychology of Atlantic City ! It is a bold 
man who will attempt its elucidation. It has 
no moral landscape, though it boasts the finest 
of seascapes. If there were already invented, 
as there will be some day, a psychical cinemato- 
graph, then, perhaps, a complete picture could 
be presented of this fascinating and vulgar re- 
sort — for vulgar in the sense of popularity it is, 

311 



ATLANTIC CITY 

monumentally vulgar, epically vulgar — epical 
— that is the word. There is a sweep of colour, 
a breeziness of space, a riot of sound, and a 
chaos of movement that appal by their ampli- 
tude. All creation seems out-of-doors. You 
jostle elbows with the man from Hindustan, the 
man from Newark, the man from London, and 
the man from California. Black, white, yellow, 
red, and brown races mingle on the Boardwalk 
in that never-ending promenade from the Inlet 
to the new pier. Between the Pickle pier and 
the Marlborough-Blenheim the course of hu- 
manity takes its way. In that section it is 
thickest. You use the short-arm jolt at every 
other step, and you wonder, if it is so bad at 
the beginning of the season, what it will be next 
week. In fifteen minutes you long for the com- 
parative ease of the rush hour on the Brooklyn 
Bridge. 

But how to 'decompose" this swirling ka- 
leidoscope into the semblance of a picture? 
You may have come over from idylKc Cape May, 
where the locust cKcks at noon and the cricket 
twitches a duet with the booming frogs after 
sundown. You may have come from Ocean 
City by boat to Longport, thence by trolley to 
your hotel. Confused by the change, looking 
vainly for old landmarks, a prey to various ap- 
prehensions — hotel prices, the rapacity of 
porters and hackmen, the insolence of waiters 
— you fall into the nearest house and wish you 
hadn't five minutes later. However, you are 

312 



I 



ATLANTIC CITY 

on the beach, and as you remove your dripping 
Hnen you sigh for New York. But that is be- 
cause Atlantic City has not begun to work its 
deadly spell. As a rule, the first ten minutes in 
a strange place is a period of disenchantment. 
To orient one's self takes at least an hour. The 
barber and a cooling cup of tea (I said "tea"!) 
are great aids to the shy spirit of man. If you 
have not to formulate your impressions on paper, 
then, lucky one, fear nothing except the occa- 
sional mosquito. After the paucity of ideas 
aroused by such a simple spot as Cape May, 
the visions, complex, multitudinous, that pour 
in upon your sensorium at Atlantic City are 
very disturbing. Where to begin ! Where to 
end ! Doubtless the best way would be to de- 
scribe the Boardwalk by day and by night, then 
trot about the hotels, make a short dash to the 
Inlet, another to Longport, and — home. But 
you would not have compassed even the super- 
ficies of the island. There is a different Atlantic 
City every hour. To register accurately its 
shifting moods of the moment would need the 
combined pens of Gautier, Zola, and Mark 
Twain. 

When our gifted gang of young fiction miners 
are quite through imitating Bret Harte and 
Buffalo Bill in the depiction of a Wild West that 
never existed, when they have finished currying 
the national mane, let them turn to Atlantic 
City as a more fruitful theme. It^s broad ave- 
nue of wood by the sea will be supplanted by 

313 



ATLANTIC CITY 

concrete in time. The medley of Kfe, the roar- 
ing of megaphones instead of newspapers, the 
frantic rush and indescribable gabble of a 
Babel-like chorus, the dazzHng single Hne of 
booths, stores, divans, holes-in-the-wall hotels, 
cafes, carousels, soda-fountains, shows; the 
buzzing of children, the shouting newsboys, the 
appeals of fakers, the quick glance of her eye, 
the scowl of beach hawks and the innocent mien 
of bucoHcs — a Walt Whitman catalogue would 
not exhaust this new metropoHs by the sea, this 
paradise of ''powerful, uneducated persons," 
patricians, milKonaires, and mendicants. In 
the foreground a brilKant sea with its "husky 
haughty lips"; as a background against a limpid 
western sky-hne is set a row of hotels, some 
palaces, some breath-catching, many common- 
place. And the piers — the Steel pier, the 
Auditorium, Young's, Heinz's, and the new 
milHon-dollar steel-and-concrete pier of John 
Young, completed some time; another city, a 
second Atlantic City, on steel and iron stilts 
extending a half-mile into the water, containing 
a half-hundred diversions — what shall we say 
to these piers? They may recall the evolution 
from the lake-dwellers of central Europe, whose 
lacustrine deposits we marvel over, just as huge 
structures, reared in the air, the modern hotels 
are the highly developed habitat of the cliff- 
dwellers. Doubtless five thousand years hence 
ardent geologists will rummage into the de- 
posits of Atlantic City and erect systems on the 

314 



ATLANTIC CITY 

strange shapes discovered, the combs, corsets, 
shovels, hairpins, flasks, and other '' kitchen 
midden" of our days that will have been buried. 

Atlantic City is a queer cosmopolis, and a 
cosmopolis that may perish easily in a giant 
inundation, so closely does it crowd the rim of 
the sea. I called it vulgar. It is, and ugly, 
too, with that absorbing ugliness of modern Kfe; 
but it is also many other things. Not Ostend, 
not Dieppe, not Brighton (England), not Trou- 
ville, not Scheveningen, not Boulogne, nor 
Etretat, Abbazia, nor Cuxhaven, Naples, nor 
the Riviera rival its infinite variety. Yet if you 
wish to loaf and invite your soul. Cape May is 
preferable. Atlantic City is not a retreat for 
the introspective; it is all on the surface; it is 
hard, ghttering, unspeakably cacophonous, and 
it never sleeps at all. Three days and you 
crave the comparative solitude of Broadway 
and Thirty-fourth Street; a week and you may 
die of insomnia. 

There is in reality no type of American girl- 
hood. When you hear of the summer girl you 
may be sure that the phrase was invented by 
the same lazy-minded male who created the 
matinee girl. Both exist only on paper. A 
stroll along the Boardwalk will prove this. 
Every variety of girl passes you. She is dark 
haired and red, blond, and brunette. Her nose 
is long and thin, thick, Grecian, or upturned hke 
the petal of a rose. But she is pretty in her 
undistinguished way. Pretty girls are really 

315 



ATLANTIC CITY 

as thick as politicians. The interesting girl is 
rare. They all dress with admirable taste, 
possibly not without an overaccentuation of 
colour — a tropical profuseness, one might add. 
However, it is hot weather, and — one thing 
we forget — America is the tropics during July 
and August. In the genuine tropics they dress 
accordingly; we do not. We wear abominable 
linen and leather and woolen; therefore a little 
latitude in the cut and hue of women's dress is 
pardonable. I never saw such a forest of bare 
arms before, arms held slightly in rear of the 
body, not in bathing costume, but street dress. 
And such shapely arms ! A Mahometan would 
turn his head the other way if he spied them. 
This display of flesh and muscle, coupled with 
the towering head-dress a la Pompadour, gave 
me an impression of the barbaric. And when 
I saw a brace of dusky belles with their frizzly 
locks puffed up in the same extravagant fash- 
ion, the illusion was still more complete. These 
descendants of Lybian queens are nearer the 
soil than their white sisters, but the ''pull" 
of their sex made them all row in the same 
boat. Such costly dressing, such huge bow- 
knots on their low sleeves, such pahmpsests 
of veils — the more you peel off the farther you 
are from the face, like those trick boxes of con- 
jurers ! I am free to confess that the American 
girls I saw were more imposing than their male 
escorts. They did, indeed, lack a certain dis- 
tinction, and the English you heard fall from 

316 



ATLANTIC CITY 

their mouths was often dreadful — not dread- 
ful alone because of its slang but because the 
intonation, pronunciation, and enunciation were 
so careless, so slipshod, so deadly common. 
These are sins overheard in most cities. In 
Atlantic City they salute you with painful em- 
phasis. But what a carriage, what light-footed 
elegance, what perpetual chewing of gum, what 
a mixture of twangs ! 

The young men resolve themselves more 
easily into a type because they persist in dressing 
alike. The peg-top trousers, the flaring cut of 
the sack coat, the flat felt hat, the gaudy shirts 
and ties seem from the same shops. You notice 
with grateful eyes that the tinted waist sash has 
disappeared and that hosiery is less voluptuous 
in design. The man who wears naughty socks 
is a man lost to a higher purpose. His is an 
essentially trivial mind; for him Emerson hath 
no charm; a yellow primrose is an ever-yellow 
primrose in his clockwork-haunted eyes. The 
notion the stranger gleans of these young fellows 
is that they are a well-meaning, sturdy, and 
slightly hard-featured lot. They shave clean. 
The square jaw, blue-grey eyes, and short nose 
betray Celtic or Germanic traces. Their fore- 
bears were Irish or Teuton, and the whole mass 
is leavened by a generous infusion of the Eastern ; 
you see, too, the olive skin, the deep-cupped 
eyes, crisp locks, and brilliant colouring of the 
Oriental. Among the women the Semitic is 
often encountered, and invariably the ensemble 



ATLANTIC CITY 

is harmonious, the figure in particular attract- 
ing attention by its richer and more generous 
curves. Of the purely exotic one never fails 
in Atlantic City; Syrians, Turks, Indians, Gip- 
sies, Armenians, Russians, Chinese, Siamese, 
Japanese — the beach swarms with all manner 
and conditions of outlanders. The costumes 
are correspondingly picturesque. 

If our native girls seem to copy in carriage 
and general style a combination of Ethel Barry- 
more and Maude Adams, the young men affect 
the rich and careless collegian attitude. They 
would have us believe that they have just es- 
caped the university. It is when the inevitable 
African brother appears that comparisons are 
ludicrous; the same pancake grey felt, the same 
baggy trousers, the same belt and tie, the same 
stride and "stolid demeanour." It is a time for 
discreet smiles. Imitation is not always the 
most agreeable form of flattery. 

Away from the ceaseless patter of feet and the 
humming of many tongues you escape to the 
beach. It is the hour of the most sacred func- 
tion of Atlantic City — the hour of the bath. 
Apart from the absence of the little bathing- 
houses so familiar in Europe, from which you 
descend solo into the water, there is not a 
marked difference nowadays between the cus- 
toms and costumes here and on the Continent. 
A decade ago American bathing suits were de- 
nounced by Europeans as wholly wicked. At 
Trouville to-day it is the American who will be 

318 



ATLANTIC CITY 

shocked. To be sure, our mermaids are begin- 
ning to discard stockings; the effect of the 
glancing sunshine is rather disquieting. After 
all, Atlantic City is devoted to the ocean for 
itself; there are many beach-combers — the 
girls who let their hair down to dry while they 
make living sculpture on the sand and beam 
on their favoured young man browning himself 
at their feet; but the main business of these folk 
is to get wet and enjoy themselves in the break- 
ers; also to fight out in a pleasant spot the 
never-ending duel of the sexes. There she 
goes, tall, alert, plunging in recklessly, riding 
the curling waves, a Galatea in silk. 

The beach is a noble one for swimming, though 
not so perfect as the strand at Cape May. No 
table d'hote salutes you as you breast the water 
— the coast is free from sewage. It is a pity 
that Atlantic City has become such a big town: 
There is no trolley on the beach; instead it runs 
from the Inlet through Atlantic Avenue, which 
is very businessHke, as far as Albany Avenue 
before the ocean is seen, but after that there is 
a superb vista until you reach Longport, not 
missing the elephant on the way. Nine miles 
and more is the distance you may travel on this 
trolley-line. The great number of hotels and 
cottages have robbed the place of all its old 
rustic al fresco charm. Even Brigantine Beach 
has succumbed to the superior magnetism of the 
larger city and to-day is moribund. There are 
railroads, hotels, steamboat service on this once- 

319 



ATLANTIC CITY 

famous resort across the Inlet, but, notwith- 
standing the large sums of money expended, it 
has gone into a decadence, let us hope a tempo- 
rary one. Too thickly populated in summer- 
time, Atlantic City, when a land breeze blows, 
is as hot as any inland town — I was about to 
say hotter. The sun beats down upon your 
head with brassy splendour. There is no shade 
excepting the piers and piazzas. The hotels 
are stuffy, and at the end of the piers the ther- 
mometers range high. In the water is the only 
comfort to be had. Luckily such heat is infre- 
quent and does not long endure. 

Music assails your ears every few feet. From 
the howling of some hideous talking-machine 
to the loud, confident blaring of the orchestra of 
the wooden horses and wooden rabbits in the 
carousel you can't escape noise. Curiously 
enough, Wagner is the favourite composer. At 
Longport, where you drink cherry-bounce, I 
heard an orchestrion play the prelude to Die 
Meistersinger, and the carousel amazed me with 
its shrill performance of the Valkyrie's Ride. 
Lohengrin, poor, peerless knight, is hacked at 
by mechanical pianos and steam-organs. Va- 
rious bands, brass and wood- wind predominating, 
attack Wagner in piecemeal. To hear an Ital- 
ian orchestra playing the andante from the Fifth 
Symphony of Beethoven on the pier is to hear a 
wonderful misplacement of accents and expres- 
sion. Never mind; it's better than ragtime. 
People whistle Wagner. He will end by becom- 

320 



ATLANTIC CITY 

ing the most popular composer in the world — a 
horrible fate for a great man. To add to this 
overwhelming symphonic olla podrida the auto- 
mobiles and their tritone whistles bring dismay 
to your ears with melancholy, blood-curdling 
wails like those of a banshee on the night when 
Larry was stretched. 

You can fish in the Inlet, sail in the open. I 
had the Bluebird out for a memorable morning. 
Rockfish, I was informed by a facetious person, 
are caught daily and of great size at the Inlet. 
It proved to be my merry friend's witticism over 
the efforts of enthusiastic, misguided men, whose 
hooks became entangled in the rocks, when, 
thinking they had a bite, they attempted to up- 
root the bottom of the bay. To vary the 
monotony of a hot afternoon I attended a game 
of baseball at the Inlet. It was my first. I do 
not understand the game, but I understand the 
instinct that has survived from the bloody spec- 
tacle of the antique circus and is reincarnated 
in the national game. Is it not a refined form 
of cruelty to force full-grown men to rush about 
in the fiercest sun's rays after a contemptibly 
small ball, tumbling in their eagerness to please 
their tyrants in the grand-stand and on the 
bleachers? What is it all about? I saw a fat 
man wearing a life-preserver on his chest, a wire 
mask on his face and shouting signals while 
dodging the wooden club with which the ball is 
attacked — that is, when it isn't missed. Men 
sprawl in the gravel, men scream angry oaths, 

321 



ATLANTIC CITY 

men are abused with vast vociferousness by the 
spectators. All this in the open air, with the 
heat furnace-Uke, and for the sake of a pitiable 
ball. Childhood's game of tag seems more sen- 
sible; golf is positively intellectual by compar- 
ison. And the cruelty of it ! I only know one 
other form of diversion more cruel, and that is a 
piano recital wherein a pianist plays a list of 
twenty compositions from Bach to Tschai- 
kowsky. I must confess, however, that this 
particular game had its humorous compensa- 
tions. It was waged between the Philadelphia 
Giants, a coloured organisation, and the Cuban 
Stars, real natives of the Pearl of the Antilles. 
As the score was three to one at the close, I pre- 
sume the Giants walloped the Cubans. A 
husky giant, black as a solar eclipse and on third 
base, kept us cool by chanting at intervals the 
sad story of his bet on a horse named Hydrant, 
a horse which is still running. This Solomon 
lent to the afternoon an air of distinction. But 
I was as thirsty as a rainbow before the affair 
was concluded, and you know a rainbow is 
double-ended. 

At a hotel I saw a dozen women, their fingers 
covered with opals, emeralds, and sapphires, 
eating green corn on the cob. How this sight 
would have pleased the tempestuous fancy of 
M. Paul Adam, who has written a book about 
America ! The dozen mouths opened simul- 
taneously, pink and pearly traps; there was a 
snapping of dentals, a gnashing of corn. The 

322 



ATLANTIC CITY 

diamonds flashed, the emeralds blazed with 
their sinister green, and the troubled milky fire 
of the opals matched at times the colour of the 
slaughtered vegetables. Surely no other could 
enjoy such a scintillating death at the teeth 
of a dozen pretty overdressed matrons and 
maids. 

I have seen old men, whose teeth were worn 
away by many years of frozen punch, call for 
three kinds of dessert — the summer hotel din- 
ner is a terrific thing. There is too much to 
choose from, and one eats far more than is good 
for Rim. You don't have to swallow everything, 
but the average sensual man when he pays five 
dollars a day usually tries to get even with the 
landlord. And the prices are on the upward 
move. For a room with bath you pay every- 
where five dollars and extra for board. Nor am 
I disposed to wax patriotic over American hotels. 
Europe is no longer the place where comfort- 
able, well-lighted rooms with bath are a rarity. 
You may grumble at paying twenty marks a 
day for your room at the Hotel Bristol, Berlin, 
but you are given a big marble bath sunk in the 
floor and a reception as well as a bed room. And 
this at the most expensive hotel in Prussia. 
Compare this with the rooms you are shown 
throughout America for the same price. I 
have done so throughout this little pilgrimage 
of mine and have been astonished by the infe- 
riority of first-class hotels in the provinces to 
first-class establishments in Europe. The ser- 

323 



ATLANTIC CITY 

vice and the cooking are on a much lower scale, 
for the native American doesn't care for the 
nuance in his food, in his art, in his literature. 
He hkes them all flavourless. He gobbles every- 
thing in a hurry, and quantity is more telling 
than quaHty. This also applies to the manner 
in which he accumulates money; but there he 
has the better of the European. 

Are pianos ever tuned at summer hotels? 
Better the mechanical eloquence of the mechan- 
ical piano than the cracked tintinnabulations of 
Chopin played by a young woman with a lawn- 
tennis touch. And we are as crude musically 
as in other things. The length of the land 
wretched music reigns. You may miss it in the 
city, but you are a helpless victim when vaca- 
tion days find you on the countryside. A na- 
tion is no better than the music it makes; its 
music is its touchstone. Let us mitigate the 
rigour of this statement, else should we stand 
shamefaced before the world, so vile, so vulgar, 
so clatteringly empty is our popular music-mak- 
ing — with a few honourable exceptions. Don't 
fancy I yearn for the classics or Wagner during 
the dog-days. Better are the old so-called 
''darky" tunes of Stephen Foster as compared 
to the shrill insolence of the degrading ragtime, 
the snorting marches, and back-alley two-steps 
that fill the spaces of our hotels with their im- 
pertinent, shallow sonorities. How can a coun- 
try aspire to artistic grandeur that tolerates such 
musical monstrosities ! Better a toneless land 

324 



ATLANTIC CITY 

than such parodies. No wonder we grow Corn- 
stocks instead of Mozarts ! 

Ah ! If America would only stick to Amer- 
ican cookery we should not be a nation of dys- 
peptics. There is better, because plainer, cook- 
ing in many farmhouses than at our hotels. 
The curse of imitation hangs over the menu — 
imitating the names of French dishes, it seldom 
comes nearer than the name. Why should we 
be poisoned by these wretched attempts at the 
Gallic. Everywhere the order of the French 
dinner — rather say the Parisian — is attempted. 
But we get watery soups, fish with mediocre 
sauce, the roast seldom rare and neither Eng- 
lish nor French, the entrees ridiculous and 
chilled, while the unhappy vegetables are mar- 
shalled in like a fleet of porcelain scows sur- 
rounding the flag-ship — a plate of overdone beef 
floating in thin gravy. We have the best ma- 
terial in the world — meats, fowl, vegetables, 
fruits — and in America the cooking is the worst 
in the world. Why? Simply because we pat- 
tern at a deplorable distance after a foreign 
model. The real American home cooking sets 
your memory jubilating. 

But Atlantic City at night! It is a picture 
for such different painters as Whistler or Tou- 
louse-Lautrec, and it is a sight not duplicated 
on earth. Miles of glittering electric lamps 
light the Boardwalk. Even the dark spaces 
above the Pickle pier are now festooned with 
lace-like fire. It is a carnival of flame. You 

325 



ATLANTIC CITY 

may start from the spot where in letters of fire 
you read, "Will you marry me?" near the Heinz 
pier, and with a book slowly walk for miles, 
perusing it all the while until you have passed 
the lower end of the walk, which recalls Coney 
Island, and finally touch the last wooden rail. 
Or, if you prefer riding, take one of those com- 
fortable sedan-chairs and be wheeled by a dark 
lad for a small sum. The enormous amount of 
electricity consumed seems to make the air 
vital. Through these garlands of light moves 
a mob of well-behaved humans. The women 
are more mysterious than in the daytime. 
Everywhere you encounter the glances of count- 
less eyes if you are still youthful. Evening 
toilets of the most dazzling kind assault your 
nerves. Wealth fairly envelops you. There is 
apparently no such thing as poverty or sickness 
in existence; the optimistic exuberance of the 
American woman and man is seen here at its 
ripest. There is a suggestion of the overblown, 
of the snobbish, in this display, but I was not 
looking for the fly in the ointment, and so I en- 
joyed the picture as I should have enjoyed some 
gorgeous tableau in Aida or Salammbo. It was 
as real. The love-birds kept up their whirring 
as from the lighthouse to the new pier the pro- 
cession bubbled and boiled. No wonder Sarah 
Bernhardt exclaimed in her effusive manner 
that Atlantic City is unique. And she saw it 
in the winter-time. 

On the Steel pier they were giving a children's 
ball. I had wearied of vaudeville, of the roller- 

326 



ATLANTIC CITY 

skating, of the thousand and two shows to be 
viewed, scattered over the various piers. A 
child's ball would be a genuine novelty. Chil- 
dren rule at this city. I saw so few at Cape 
May that babies appear to rain from the skies 
here. They roll about the sand Hke little ani- 
mals, and when they should be in bed, dreaming 
of candy angels, they are togged in festal rai- 
ment and allowed to dance their tender legs 
off till midnight. The huge dancing-hall of the 
pier was filled with happy and proud parents. 
A band played with vicious precision a march 
as a half-mile of children and tots of three or 
four slowly paced the slippery floor. A master 
of ceremonies with a cool head solemnly guided 
the manoeuvres of this juvenile army. Two by 
two, boy and girl, they moved to the music with 
shining, evening faces, all vainly dressed, all 
eager and joyous. They were each given a 
prize. The effect was indescribable. Nearly 
half a thousand children, preparing for the great, 
good game of life, some of them with matured 
faces, the majority wearing that wonderful ex- 
pression of expectancy, as if the curtain were 
about to be lifted and the glorious secret of life 
revealed to their ravished gaze. I could not help 
recalling Thackeray and his moist spectacles 
when he heard the charity children sing at St. 
Paul's. I tried to weep, but the music was too 
excruciating, and a child slipped on the polished 
parquet and — drat that youngster ! she dropped 
sand in my shoe when I was getting my hand- 
kerchief ready ! 

327 



ATLANTIC CITY 

They have a hyphenated hotel on the beach. 
The architecture of one section is so extraor- 
dinary that I gasped when I saw it. I haven't 
the remotest notion of the architect's name, nor 
did I go into the hotel, fearing the usual per- 
fection of modern appliances and all the rest of 
the useful things that are driving romance away 
from our age. It was the exterior that glued 
my feet to the Boardwalk. If Coleridge, in 
Kubla Khan, or Poe, in The Domain of Arnheim, 
had described such a fantastic structure we 
should have understood, for they were men of 
imagination. But in the chilly, aesthetic air 
of our country, where utility leads beauty by 
the nose, to see a man gi\^ng rein to his fancy 
as has the man who conceived this exotic pile 
is deHghtfully refreshing. WilHam Beckford, 
the author of Vathek, would have wished for 
nothing richer. The architecture might be 
Byzantine. It suggests St. Marco's at Venice, 
St. Sophia at Constantinople, or a Hindu palace, 
with its crouching dome, its operatic fagade, 
and its two dominating monoHths with blunt 
tops. Built of concrete, the exterior decoration 
is a luxurious exfohation in hues, turquoise and 
fawn. I did not venture near the building for 
fear some Atlantic City Flip would cry out: 
*'Wake up! You are at Winslow Junction!" 
If ever I go to the place again it will be to see 
this dream architecture, with its strange evoca- 
tions of Asiatic colour and music. 



328 



II 

NEWPORT 

At Newport I tasted sour grapes. In the 
heart of Newport I became a snob. Newport 
saw me fall from grace, social, not sinful. Worse 
remains — at Newport I took my maiden voy- 
age in a motor-car. I am still giddy from the 
swiftly shifting experiences of the week spent 
at the Queen of Summer Resorts — as the real- 
estate agents call this little Rhode Island town. 
I had reached Boston, only to miss the one com- 
fortable afternoon train to Newport. And the 
night of horror I spent in that congeries of 
crooked streets I endured as a penance for my 
frequent complaints against New York. We are 
noisy, but Boston caps us at the game. Their 
elevated railroad sounds like the thunderous ap- 
proach of a tornado; to sleep within a mile of 
it is out of the question, particularly as they 
close the drug stores at eleven o'clock. What 
man said that he would rather be a policeman in 
Harlem than a poet in Boston ? Although I do 
not know his name, I wave him a friendly salute. 

Naturally I arrived at Newport the next day 
in a bad humour. The weather did not improve 
my temper. It was muggy. It weighed upon 

329 



NEWPORT 

one like the folds of a deflated balloon. You 
felt heavier, older, more serious. This, then, I 
thought, is the nerve-soothing climate I have 
read so much about ! Give me Saratoga. Give 
me the Berkshires. In a depressing mood I 
sauntered through the town, which was lively 
enough, preparations for the carnival being in 
progress. But I found it dull, not quaintly dull, 
as did Henry James, but provincially so. The 
old court-house, Touro Park, Morton Park, the 
Hebrew cemetery, the queer little streets with 
queer little houses on them, the narrow side- 
walks — all these, with their historical memories, 
did not elicit from me the mental spark we call 
interest. My historic sense failed me when most 
I needed it. I did not feel the thrill patriotic 
when I saw Uncle Sam's sailors rolKng about the 
place loaded to the gunwales with fire-water. 
Nor did I go out of my way to look at the Perry 
Monument or Fort Adams. In a word, I was 
a disgruntled human, suffering from the hu- 
midity, annoyed by the proximity of much 
inutile bustle, and selfishly absorbed in himself. 
Perhaps I was suffering from that minor malady 
peculiar to sociahsts called "sour grapes." I 
had asked several policemen to point me out an 
aristocrat, a milKonaire; but my request had 
in all cases been received with suspicious glances. 
I had seen French and English aristocrats and 
had been greatly impressed by their disengage- 
ment from the quotidian things of life. They 
had sauntered, they had lolled, they had looked 

330 



NEWPORT 

bored. Would the American aristo saunter, loll, 
and look bored ? Finally a man who was read- 
ing Thoreau near the Old Mill advised me to 
hire a carriage and see the ocean driveway. 

As soon as we entered Bellevue Avenue, what 
I had been searching for commenced to make its 
presence apprehended; the thrice-distilled, the 
precious atmosphere of Newport gently smote 
my dejected consciousness. I sat up and began 
to take notice. The driver was an old resident, 
a bluff person, middle-aged, shrewd, and not 
given to mincing his language. He called a 
millionaire a millionaire. Before I had reached 
the Spouting Rock I had made the acquain- 
tance of the largest and most select closet of 
family skeletons outside of an anatomical mu- 
seum. How they dangled before my eyes ! 
How they beckoned with bony beckonings ! How 
they leered from their empty eye sockets ! How 
they wagged their shining skulls ! It was a 
Danse Macabre this coachman set moving for 
my benefit. And what a catalogue of misery, 
sin, unhappiness, sordid vulgarity, even crime, 
was unrolled ! Suicide, embezzlement, dishon- 
oured homes, disgrace, and all manner of follies 
had happened within the sacred precincts of 
this bilhon-dollar paradise. Anecdote piled on 
anecdote; scandal trailed after scandal; no one 
was spared. In despair I asked this dealer in 
fractured decalogues if he took me for a news- 
paper man. He repKed, without an appearance 
of surprise, that he knew I was a clergyman. 

33^ 



NEWPORT 

"Then drive to the nearest church," I sternly 
admonished him, "or else stop talking!" He 
swallowed the hint and we drove on. But I 
still suffered. What ! this angelic retreat con- 
cealed such vile and pitiful histories? Of what 
value is great wealth if it cannot smooth away 
all the rough places, heal all the sores? This 
modern philosopher's stone for which we all 
struggle, this magic medium which occupies the 
foreground of our waking and dreaming thoughts 
our Hves long — is it not the real solvent of evil? 
May it be in reality evil itself ? 

"Over yonder," said the driver, breaking my 
profound meditations, "is The Breakers." The 
mist encircled it and it looked like a mediaeval 
fortress, full of torture chambers. 

Many other wonderful houses I saw, veritable 
palaces, surrounded by magnificent gardens, em- 
bowered densely in flowers, beautiful beyond the 
dream of poets, and framed by rich vegetation 
and trees of heroic growth. All that has been 
said in praise of Newport you may safely set 
down as an understatement. It is more formal 
than you may expect — I mean in the rectitude 
of its wide avenues on the Hill and in the con- 
trolled efflorescence of its horticulture. Design, 
taste, even fantasy, are everywhere visible. 
There are explosions of hydrangeas of almost 
every hue, in company with the looming and 
floral flight of tall hoflyhocks. I saw some gar- 
dens that recafled England, others that trans- 
ported me to Italy — but Italy in the spring- 

332 



NEWPORT 

tide, before the lustre of summer has robbed the 
hills of their delicate contours, the flowers of 
their virginal pose. If Newport should ever 
change its commonplace name it could be re- 
christened Hydrangea without doing violence 
either to fact or imagination. 

The ClifT Walk is three miles and a half of 
the pure picturesque. From Easton's Beach to 
Land's End there is a series of surprises; not 
alone in the villas, but in the coy turns of the 
walk, the unexpected change of marine physiog- 
nomy, and then the sheer romance of the entire 
coast. Unlike Mr. James, I came to Newport 
unburdened by memories. It was my first visit. 
I saw it with eyes not haunted by ghosts of dead 
youth; nor did I fetch with me prejudices. 

If society folk can't always catch the glint of 
gold on a canvas of Monticehi, or the harmonies 
in a Ballade by Chopin, or the ethereal tones of 
Shelley, or the marmoreal splendours of Milton, 
or the tortured music of a Rodin group, why, it 
is their loss. As compensation they may dine 
and wine — not things to be despised — dress 
and gamble, waste or win ; above all, feel to their 
finger-tips a sense of power. And the last may 
be best. Things balance in this universe, not- 
withstanding our cry against the injustice of the 
cosmos. I should probably be a very unhappy 
man were I wealthy; yet I understand the 
pleasures wealth confers. So do not let us de- 
spise the multimillionaire. Often has his wealth 
been thrust upon him. Often it irks its owner, 

333 



NEWPORT 

who seeks to get rid of the burden by opening 
his windows and throwing his money into the 
streets. We speak of such as dissipated; in 
reahty it is nature striving to attain its accus- 
tomed mediocrity. Let us applaud spend- 
thrifts and them that go down to the market- 
place, there to fribble away their inheritance. 
And let us also put an end to this useless moral- 
ising and continue our tale. 

I had viewed all Newport from the outside. I 
had been to the Casino playground looking for 
my American aristocrat, instead seeing a nice 
set of young chaps wdth brawny, sun-spotted 
arms all playing tennis; I had lunched at Ber- 
ger's, walked through Love Lane — alas ! — 
alone; had glanced at General Prescott's head- 
quarters in 1776, at the home of WilHam Ellery, 
a signer of the Declaration of Independence; at 
the old Trinity Church, the Channing House, 
built in 1720; the New York Yacht Club, the 
Windmill, even had I gone to Lawton's Valley; 
I knew the Parade by heart, and I disliked the 
brittle noise of Thames Street, disliked its 
crowds, its ugly shops. At Mile End I found 
solitude ; and I viewed Gooseberry Island — • 
its seclusion — that tiny islet where poker is 
played to the swash of the waves, where jack-pots 
of fabulous sums are opened by the sporting old 
bucks who go over in launches and return often 
with empty pockets. When I passed Rocham- 
beau's headquarters during the Revolution I 
tried to conjure up a thrill, but a baby playing 

334 



NEWPORT 

on the door-step with a kitten was better to my 
eyes than all the musty, dusty memories. I 
saw Bailey's Beach, where the swells bathe in 
perfumed salt water; Easton's Beach, where the 
water is common salt for the plain people. 

This same drive was under a slaty grey sky. 
The ocean was leaden in hue, and across the 
bay the clouds hung like those "white elephants" 
Henry James saw on the Cliff Walk. The world 
was drab for me. I met a few people driving. 
Otherwise Newport seemed unpeopled. The Ad- 
dicks mansion, the "gas house," looked dreary 
on its dreary perch. And then something hap- 
pened. A voice I well knew called out: 

"You plumber, you ! What comet shook you 
from its tail into Newport?" It was Clarence, 
the only son and graceless heir of a chewing- 
gum emperor, in his sixty-horse-power car puff- 
ing and blowing on the narrows and I sitting in 
a hired vehicle watching him with amazed eyes. 
My driver had also astonished eyes. He ap- 
peared downcast. He was evidently pondering 
his list of skeletons ! 

"You chump, get out of that trap and come 
into my boiler-shop. I call this machine of mine 
mangeur de poulets, it eats up the chickens so 
beautifully." I stretched my cramped legs and 
responded to Clarence's invitation slowly. For 
one thing, I didn't Hke the look of his piratical 
craft. I hated to admit it — I had never been 
in an automobile before. Clarence laughed. 
"Don't let that worry you — you won't con- 

335 



NEWPORT 

tract seasickness; and please call it a motor-car. 
They say 'automobiles' in New York. This is 
Newport." I grinned. Then I asked my man 
what I owed him. He calculated audibly. 
^'You're not keeping to your contract," he 
blandly observed, "and so it will cost you a dol- 
lar extra." 

"But, you old undertaker of live reputations," 
I hotly answered, "I'm saving you a farther 
ride." "I'm here and I've got to take the team 
home," he doggedly maintained. And so I paid 
him, greatly wondering at Rhode Island arith- 
metic. 

"Serves you right," added Clarence, "for not 
letting me know you were here. Jump in. 
Hold on to your teeth. Let her go !" We flew 
homeward. We flew heavenward. I saw sky 
rush down to sea and meet in rough embrace. 
Houses looked like trees and trees like tooth- 
picks. I remembered my past and I saw my 
future; the present was merely a humming 
bridge between. Clarence, still smiling, tooted 
masterfully. From Bailey's Beach to Easton's 
we ran in thirty-three seconds — at least that 
is what he said. Later I discovered that he had 
been boasting. 

But the ride had other results. A psychical 
transformation was going on within me. My 
subliminal self was slowly pushing into the map 
of my consciousness a new Me. Suddenly I be- 
came a snob. A full-fledged snob sat in the 
place occupied before by a modest, middle- 

336 



NEWPORT 

aged, stout person, full of the vapours. What 
had happened? Alas, I was become a snob! 
I meanly admired mean things. I admired my- 
self. I admired the auto — the motor-car. I 
admired Clarence. Above all, I looked down on 
the world afoot. What black magic had ema- 
nated from the petrol of this fugacious machine 
that so changed a man into a snob ! Mark the 
consequences. 

''Clarence," I said, endeavouring to appear 
haughty, ''Clarence, what are those creatures 
in the surf?" Clarence, still wearing that 
damnable smile of his, responded : 

"Those are the common people bathing." 

"Ah, you mean hoi polloi." I chuckled at my 
wit. 

"Odi profanum vulgus," he quickly retorted. 
When bad Greek meets worse Latin, then comes 
the tug of tongues ! Our chauffeur — I say 
"our" — who sat in the garage, or the pan- 
neau, or some part of the locomotive, was a New 
Zealander disguised as a man from Brittany. 
He was versed in all the moves of the social 
checker-board. As we turned toward the town 
he blew a whistle. 

"I made him do that," remarked Clarence 
languidly, "to remind me of my engagements." 
The idea tickled my fancy. 

"Why not employ flappers, as they did in 
Swift's Laputa?" 

"Howdye do, Reggie?" called out Clarence to 
a young fellow in a red-wheeled bucking bronco. 

337 



NEWPORT 

The name sounded familiar. Reggie and New- 
port ! Ay, ay, of course, said I to myself, remem- 
bering my blue book. 

"Howdye do, Harry?" I sat up, displaying 
pardonable curiosity. 

^' The Harry?" 

''Of course," replied Clarence pettishly. 
''And, old man, please don't wear your ignorance 
on your sleeve, I'll post you later. I'm ashamed 
if Armance, my chauffeur, hears you. Remem- 
ber — not a word about chewing-gum down 
here. They won't stand for it. I'm the son 
of a sugar sultan, not, as you so stupidly call 
it, a chewing-gum potentate. And please don't 
make so much fun of the girls who chew gum in 
America. My father has already asked me to 
cross you off my visiting list. All American girls 
chew gum. Also — in the house of the hangman 
no one speaks of the rope !" 

"And in Newport?" I hazarded. He pulled 
up his machine. 

"Newport is not America — put that in your 
social pipe and smoke it. Newport is an island 
surrounded by Americans. All the smart Amer- 
icans are working twenty-five hours a day to get 
here ; their wives are driving them to it. And if 
work won't get them here they rob banks, plun- 
der insurance companies, water railroad stock, 
milk the public generally so as to land here." 
He paused. 

"And what do they do when they do get 
here?" I said, as if in a dream. I was still a 

338 



NEWPORT 

snob. I still saw myself hugely silhouetted 
against the social horizon, with my friends at 
my boot heels. Oh, automobile — I mean, 
motor-car — what sins may be laid to thy ac- 
count ! Thou art the modern Mephisto who 
tempts the poor little Fausts that earn a handful 
of dollars every week ! 

"Do?" replied Clarence, calmly handing a 
cigarette to the hairy Armance, '^why, work like 
the rest of the social convicts on this island of 
golden castaways." I roared. Clarence could 
be witty. But he regarded me sourly. 

"Don't be a bromide !" he tartly commanded. 
Ever since he had met Gelett Burgess at a dolls' 
dance Clarence fancied himself a sulphite. But 
he wasn't. I knew it. I laughed again, loudly 
and, I fear, vacantly. 

"There you go," he exclaimed. "You are 
like the rest of the rank outsiders. You come 
down here and go to the Casino or to the club, 
and because you see some people lounging you 
talk about the idle rich. But there are no idle 
rich at Newport. They are the busy rich. They 
work harder than a motorman. They are nearly 
all motormen. Mechanics, jockeys, athletes, 
gourmands — if they can't work their muscles 
they can their teeth — pedestrians, gymnasts, 
swimmers, sailors, butlers, dancers, polo play- 
ers, bar mixers, lawn-tennis virtuosi, aeronauts, 
locomotive drivers, horse trainers, biUiardists — 
why, the list might be stretched from here to 
the harbour. Idle ? These people ? They work 

339 



NEWPORT 

harder than draught horses from morning to 
midnight. They toil as toils no sailor doing his 
daily stint. And they put their soul into their 
work. And the women are quite as devoted in 
this self-abnegation. Just watch Willie Dubbs 
— you know, the son of old Dubbs, who was 
painted by Sargent. Don't you remember that 
picture at the society's exhibition, No. 23, Por- 
trait of a Gentlemanly Ass? Well, watch 
Willie mix a cocktail. No artist at the Waldorf 
can touch him. No, my poor old chap, you 
don't know this crowd as I do. Their money 
is not like that of Midas. Everything they 
touch turns them to work. If they can't work 
they die — die of indigestion or of ennui. And 
a healthier, handsomer set of men and women 
you won't see in all America. They all look as 
if Gibson and Dick Davis designed them. Go 
any Thursday night to Freebody Park, where 
they give a vaudeville show. Well, you'll find 
the boxes crowded with the best set. There is 
little difference, after all, between the poor 
American man and the American aristocrat. 
Both have the same tastes. Both eat, drink, 
smoke, and slang as much as they can. Both 
work hard, both enjoy vaudeville shows, both 
like pretty women, both" — I interrupted 
him. 

"And how about poetry, art, music? How 
about the old-fashioned leisure and dignity?" 

"Rot! Nowadays we haven't time to be 
polite. We're hustlers." 

340 



NEWPORT 

"Bravo, monsieur!" It was the voice of 
Armance. Clarence was touched. 

''But as to Harry? What does he work?" I 
persisted. 

''Oh, Harry! He makes epigrams. Here. 
Armance, take the wheel. Watch the compass. 
Keep her headed N. by N. E. We go to Reg- 
gie's festival." I was appalled. I wore plain 
clothes. My tie was Bromidian, even though 
my soul was snobbish. But Clarence would 
take no refusal. He pulled a note-book from his 
buff velvet jacket and began reading from it at 
the top of his lungs. 

"Here is a batch of the cleverest things Harry 
got off at the Wormwoods' dance last Friday. I 
thought the Missus would die of smiles. Listen 
— and don't give me away: 'The first to holler 
is the first to collar.' Great, isn't it? 'Bridge 
is hell!' 'Faint nerve never won a full hand.' 
'Who said fizz?' They always shriek at that 
one. 'Apres moi — le poisson.' 'There's as 
good fish in the sea as ever came out of the 
Stuyvesant pond.' 'A Hve monkey is better 
than a dead leader.' 'What's the difference be- 
tween Newport and the Pier?'" Clarence im- 
patiently awaited my answer. I regarded him 
blankly. "Well?" "Isn't it because Brander 
Matthews stops at the Pier?" 

"You're the limit," he coarsely said. "No, 
it's because at Narragansett the bathing is bet- 
ter." I moaned. Then I stretched my arms 
skywc i. 

341 



NEWPORT 

"Oh, Clyde Fitch, where are you that I may 
make my apologies for having attacked your 
stage pictures of this Hfe? You didn't make it 
half strong enough — no, not by a half." 

^'Stop your critical yapping; these are really 
mine, not Harry's. Here we are." We dis- 
mounted. There were about five thousand peo- 
ple, rich, poor, shabby relatives, parasites, social 
molluscs, and farmers, all trying to get in at 
once. It was a few miles from Newport. The 
affair was for a laudable benefit — I forget now 
just which one. I think few present knew. 
How the snobbery of these people sickened me ! 
Not one-tenth of them knew their hosts by sight, 
yet they chatted of them like old friends. So 
did I to Clarence. I said ''Reggie" a dozen 
times; and how they stared at the prettily 
garbed and beautiful society women serving ice- 
cream and lemonade ! So did I. But I fancy 
I did it less rudely. Oh, snobs, snobs, snobs! 
And I among them all, admiring the display of 
wealth, the wonderful training-ring, the wonder- 
ful horses, the marvellous women. I saw all the 
fashionable people whose names were printed 
next morning in the papers. The trouble was 
that they didn't see me. I expressed this idea 
to Clarence, but he was busily engaged talking 
to a girl with turquoise-coloured eyes who spoke 
slang with a heavenly intonation. Oh, snobs, 
snobs, snobs -. 

I was about to address Mrs. Arthur Pompa- 
dour, when Clarence, holding me by the elbow, 

342 



NEWPORT 

led me to his chicken-slaying chariot. Once 
ensconced therein he huskily asked: ''Where?" 
''Armance, home for this social aspirant." 
Away we bowled. I was in the swim. So was 
Clarence. But Clarence was rich and I was 
poor. At last I dozed off, only to be overtaken 
by a nightmare, in which I found myself sweat- 
ing as I tunnelled my way into the safe of the 
Chemical Bank. I must have money, money 
for Newport. Help ! Help ! I awoke. It was 
day. Es war ein traum. Alas, poor snob! 

That afternoon we cut the dust on the way to 
Narragansett Pier. We took one of the ferries 
to Jamestown, crossed the island at a clip, rolled 
on another boat and, once ashore, rushed our 
gait until we stood puffing and clanking before 
the Casino. After some of Sherry's cooking 
we went about and I saw the place once 
beloved of Edgar Saltus and celebrated in his 
brilliant prose. Sherry's chef pleased me as 
much as anything I encountered at the Pier, 
even the ocean walk. There is a look of faded 
splendour about the place despite its wealth and 
its air of fashion. I have been told by Clarence 
that I am all wrong, that only now is the Pier 
taking on new life. 

^'Consider, reflect if you can," he proceeded. 
''You lunch at Berger's, over in Newport, and 
then you leave early and by hard steaming you 
may get over here and lunch at the Casino. Yet 
you say our set doesn't do a day's work." 

The carnival week, with its glitter, colour, 

343 



NEWPORT 

bustle, gaiety, its crowds, yachts, and war-ships, 
soldiers, sailors, and numberless girls, left on me 
a brighter impression of the brave old town. 
Lovely, auriferous Newport, who shall pluck out 
the heart of thy melancholy mystery? Under 
what sinister sand-bank have the jealous gods 
hidden the proofs of thy family skeletons. If 
in New York money makes the mare go, in New- 
port it is wheels that turn the brain. My brain 
did not regain its average gait until I passed 
over the gang-plank of the Priscilla, which swam 
in that harbour that looks so Enghsh ; and before 
we reached New York I had shed my snobskin 
completely. 

Newport, thou pactolian city by the sea, be- 
fore whom so many women of America immolate 
themselves, Newport, I adore thee, but I shall 
never look upon thy fair face again — that is, 
unless Clarence invites me to Villa Confiture. 
Then by train or balloon I shall storm thy ada- 
mantine social wall. Do not leave me, an 
adipose Peri, at the gates of thy paradise. At 
Newport I tasted sour grapes. Oh, snobs, snobs, 
snobs ! 



344 



BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 



THE PATHOS 

of 

DISTANCE 

A Book of a Thousand and One 
Moments 

i2mo. $2.00 net 

" He talks about Bergson as well as Matisse; he never can keep 
still about Wagner; he hauls over his French library of modern 
immorials, and he gives a touch to George Moore, to Arthur Davies, 
and to many another valiant worker in paint, music and letters. 
The book is stimulating; brilliant even with an unexpected bril- 
liancy." — Chicago Tribune. 

PROMENADES 

of an 

IMPRESSIONIST 

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technical contributions of Cezanne and Rodin. Here, Mr. Huneker 
is a real interpreter, and here his long experience of men and ways 
in art counts for much. Charming, in the slighter vein, are such 
appreciations as the Monticelli. and Chardin." — Frank Jewett 
Mather, Jr., in New York Nation and Evening Post. 



EGOISTS 

A BOOK OF SUPERMEN 

STENDHAL. BAUDELAIRE, FLAUBERT, ANATOLE 

FRANCE, HUYS^L\NS, BARR^S, HELLO, 

BLAKE, NIETZSCHE, IBSEN. 

AND MAX STIRNER 

, With Portrait and Facsimile Reproductions 

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"Closely and yet lightly written, full of facts, yet as amusing as 
a bit of discursive talk, penetrating, candid and very shrewd." 

—Royal Cortissoz, in the New York Tribune. 



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BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 

ICONOCLASTS: 

A Book of Dramatists 

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Contents: Henrik Ibsen — August Strindberg — Henry Becque — 
Gerhart Hauptmann — Paul Hervieu — The Quintessence of 
Shaw— Maxim Gorky's Nachtasyl — Hermann Sudermann — 
Princess Mathilde's Play — Duse and D'Annunzio — Villiers de 
risle Adam — Maurice Maeterlinck. 

" His style is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in which 
we are led to expect some significance, if not wit, in every sentence." 
— G. K. Chesterton, in London Daily News. 

"No other book in English has surveyed the whole field so com- 
prehensively." — The Outlook. 

"A capital book, lively, informing, suggestive." 

— London Times Saturday Review. 
" Eye-opening and mind-clarifying is Mr. Huneker's criticism ; 
no one having read that opening essay in this volume 
will lay it dowTi until the final judgment upon Maurice Maeterlinck 
is reached." — Boston Transcript. 



OVERTONES: 

A Book of Temperaments 

H^/7ff FRONTISPIECE POR TRAIT OF 
RICHARD. STRAUSS 

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Contents: Richard Strauss — Parsifal: A Mystical Melodrama — 
Literary Men who loved Music (Balzac, Turgenieff, Daudet, 
etc.) — The Eternal Feminine — The Beethoven of French Prose 
— Nietzsche the Rhapsodist — Anarchs of Art — After Wagner, 
What? — Verdi and Boito. 

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edge, its catholicity of taste, and its inexhaustible energy." 

— Saturday Rei'iew, London. 

"In some respects Mr. Huneker must be reckoned the most 
brilliant of all living writers on matters musical."— ylca£/e7M3», London. 

"No modem musical critic has shown greater ingenuity in the 
attempt to correlate the literary and musical tendencies of the nine- 
teenth century." — Spectator, London. 



BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 

MEZZOTINTS IN 
MODERN MUSIC 

BRAHMS, TSCHAIKOWSKY, CHOPIN, 

RICHARD STRAUSS, LISZT 

AND WAGNER 

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music and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few words 
as possible ; or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping 
strokes with a magnificent disregard for unimportant details. And 
as Mr. Huneker is, as I have said, a powerful personality, a man of 
quick brain and an energetic imagination, a man of moods and tem- 
perament — a string that vibrates and sings in response to music — 
we get in these essays of his a distinctly original and very valuable 
contribution to the world's tiny musical literature." 

— J. F. RuNCiMAN, in London Saturday Review. 



MELOMANIACS 

i2mo. $1.50 net 

Contents: The Lord's Prayer in B — A Son of Liszt — A Chopin 
of the Gutter — The Piper of Dreams — An Emotional Acrobat 
— Isolde's Mother — The Rim of Finer Issues — An Ibsen Girl — 
Tannhauser's Choice — The Red-Headed Piano Player — Bryn- 
hild's Immolation — The Quest of the Elusive — An Involuntary 
Insurgent — Hunding's Wife — The Corridor of Time — .Avatar 
— The Wegstaffes give a Musicale — The Iron Virgin — Dusk 
of the Gods — Siegfried's Death — Intermezzo — A Spinner of 
Silence — The Disenchanted Symphony — Music the Conqueror. 

"It would be difficult to sum up 'Melomaniacs' in a phrase. 
Never did a book, in my opinion at any rate, exhibit greater con- 
trasts, not, perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of clearness and 
obscurity. It is inexplicably uneven, as if the writer were perpetu- 
ally playing on the boundary line that divides sanity of thought from 
intellectual chaos. There is method in the madness, but it is a 
method of intangible ideas. Nevertheless, there is genius written 
over a large portion of it, and to a musician the wealth of musical 
imagination is a living spring of thought." 

— Harold E. Gorst, in London Saturday Review (Dec. 8, 1906). 



BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 



VISIONARIES 

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Contents: A Master of Cobwebs — The Eighth Deadly Sin — The 
Purse of Aholibah — Rebels of the Moon — The Spiral Road — 
A Mock Sun — Antichrist — The Eternal Duel — The Enchanted 
Yodler — The Third Kingdom — The Haunted Harpsichord— 
The Tragic Wall — A Sentimental Rebellion — Hall of the Miss- 
ing Footsteps — The Cursory Light— An Iron Fan — The Woman 
Who Loved Chopin — The Tune of Time — Nada — Pan. 

" In ' The Spiral Road ' and in some of the other stories both fan- 
tasy and narrative may be compared with Hawthorne in his most 
unearthly moods. The younger man has read his Nietzsche and has 
cast off his heritage of simple morals. Hawthorne's Puritanism finds 
no echo in these modern souls, all sceptical, wavering an-i unblessed. 
But Hawthorne's splendor of vision and his power of sympiv' -,v' h 
a tormented mind do live again in the best of Mr. Huneker's stoi jes," 

— London Academy (Feb. 3, 1906). 



FRANZ LISZT 

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combination— devilled kidneys and mushrooms, let us say, or grilled 
sole and chablis, but certainly not strawberries and cream ... for 
James has a tongue with a tang . . . his book will be read when 
all the Liszt centenary literature has returned to the comparative 
innocence of pulp." — London Daily Chronicle. 



CHOPIN: 

The Man and His Music 

IVITH ETCHED PORTRAIT 

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of Chopin and his works is destined to be the permanent one. He 
gives the reader the cream of the cream of all noteworthy previous 
commentators, besides much that is wholly his own. He speaks at 
once with modesty and authority, always with personal charm." 

— Boston Transcript. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK 



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